Jail
by Flatpickluvr
Summary: This is my idea of what should happen to our favorite guy when he goes to jail.  This is strictly Hilson and be aware of the M rating for adult situations and language.
1. Chapter 1

**Jail**

**A House MD Fan Fiction story**

**Disclaimer – I have no idea what is going to happen in the season premiere because I don't believe any of the trailers. They are so misleading. Nor do I believe any of the tweets I have been receiving. They can be misleading too. This is my idea of what I think should happen to try to rehabilitate our poor guy while he is in the hoosegow (American slang for jail). Wilson will figure prominently. This will be strictly Hilson. Rated M for adult situations and language.**

Sitting on the curb nursing his injured wrist, Wilson looked up at the chaotic scene around him. There were police cars from more than one jurisdiction, two fire engines, several ambulances and more people milling around than Cuddy's neighborhood had seen in years. The street had been cordoned off with police cars, and Cuddy's house (what was left of it, anyway), was surrounded with caution tape. Several men were boarding up the front of her house where it had been smashed in, in what was probably a vain attempt to keep more of it from falling down. Officers were scouring the neighborhood with police dogs, looking for any trace of House. There is something about an emergency scene that draws the neighbors outside, and this was no ordinary emergency scene.

Centered prominently amongst all the destruction was House's fifteen year old Chrysler sedan, sitting in the middle of what was once Cuddy's living room. Cuddy was sitting on the curb on the right side of her house, as far away as she could get from Wilson. She was being interviewed by a New Jersey State Police officer. Wilson was so filled with hate for how Cuddy had treated House the last six months that he couldn't stand to be close to her. Other thoughts were going through Wilson's mind as well; chief among them, concern for House's mental well-being. Wilson was also in a state of shock, hardly able to comprehend what House had just done. House had been like a powder keg waiting to explode. _Some_ type of explosion was expected, given the volatile nature of their relationship while it lasted and especially given the fact that the lie that broke the camel's back was the lie Cuddy told House when she said she wasn't seeing anyone. Wilson expected some type of shouting match; not this.

Sitting on the curb on the left side of Cuddy's house, far enough away that he couldn't hear what she was telling the cop, Wilson could still see her well enough to study her face. Wilson was trying to read her facial expressions and body language. Who knew what she was telling that cop. The only thing that seemed crystal clear to Wilson was that Cuddy had every intention of punishing House as harshly as possible.

House had done plenty that deserved punishment by the judicial system. Forging prescriptions certainly ranked up there. Add reckless driving, assault with a motor vehicle, assault with intent to cause great bodily harm, and who knows how many other charges to that and House could well spend years behind bars.

House was no stranger to jails. Years ago, he'd spent several nights behind bars courtesy of Detective Michael Tritter. Most recently he'd spent a few hours in the local jail in Schenectady NY, after he threatened Harold Lam with the spud gun. Considering that House had been forging prescriptions for years, it was amazing that he'd actually spent so little time behind bars.

Wilson suspected that anger and shock were fueling everything Cuddy said right now. Her answers to whatever the cop asked her were bound to be influenced by, and probably even exaggerated by anger, shock, and guilt. Anger over what House had done, shock over the extent of the damage, and guilt over how she had treated House the last six months that eventually led up to this disaster. She wasn't at fault for his behavior, but she did share some of the blame for the problems that pre-dated all of this.

When the cop asked Wilson if he knew where House was, he didn't lie when he said House would be in the darkest, most depressing hole-in-the-wall bar to be found in New Jersey. Wilson truly had no idea where his best friend was, and that scared the living daylights out of him.

Even while knowing that House didn't want to be found, Wilson still couldn't help but silently go through the list of their favorite hangouts, making mental notes to call all of them as soon as the cops stopped questioning him. It would probably be futile, since House obviously didn't want to be found, but Wilson wanted to do _something_ before the police got a hold of House.

Or maybe that would be a mistake. _Maybe I should just stay out of it,_ thought Wilson. _Every time he gets into trouble, and I mean EVERY time, he calls on me to bail him out. Maybe it's time to man up and dig yourself out of trouble, House,_ Wilson thought. _Be a man. Own up to what you did and be a man about it._

_Cuddy'll nail his ass to the wall. Wonder how lenient the justice system will be on a drug addicted doctor with multiple felony charges? Not that I can do anything to lighten the punishment, but he means everything to me and he really does need me._

The officer concluded his questioning of Wilson by asking if Wilson wanted to press charges. "He didn't hit me, and he wasn't trying to hit me, so no. I'm not pressing charges against him."

The officer looked askance at Wilson and then added one more statement; something that Wilson already knew and he wished the officer didn't have to say it out loud. Wilson would need to be available when House was apprehended and the litigation began. He was a prime witness.

On the other side of her house, out of Wilson's earshot but not out of his field of vision, Cuddy remained seated on the curb, scowling and staring daggers at the detective who'd been questioning her. "Just give me the forms. If Greg House sets foot in my hospital, comes anywhere near me, I want him thrown in jail."

Many hours later, after most of the commotion had died down and all the emergency vehicles were gone, Wilson quietly returned to the scene of the crime. _Please, House, please, let me find you. Please come home. Let's talk about this and deal with it together. Please come home!_ Wilson pleaded silently.

An enormous blue tarp had been draped over the gaping hole in Cuddy's house. A policeman remained on guard outside of the structure. The caution tape around her house was still in place but the roadblocks were gone and the street had reopened to traffic. Wilson sat quietly in his car a block or so away, taking in the massive destruction. He'd already gone home, but hadn't been able to sleep. The destruction to Cuddy's home caused by one man was almost unfathomable, and Wilson came back simply because he just couldn't believe it happened at all. He needed to come back to confirm that this wasn't all just some awful nightmare. Oh, how he wanted to close his eyes. He would awaken in his comfortable bed with House next to him and they'd laugh, crack some good dick jokes, plot some funny but harmless pranks to play on Cuddy and pretend like the last year just never happened.

For a few moments, Wilson wondered where Cuddy was; was she with Rachel at her mother's home? Should he check on her? Then he slapped himself. _Get a hold of yourself, James. Who gives a flying fuck where she is? She has plenty of people to take care of her. House only has me. Go find House!_

"House," Wilson called to the recumbent form of Gregory House, passed out and lying prone across several chairs in the ticketing area at the Newark airport. "House, come on, wake up." Wilson shook him gently by the shoulders. Wilson had already driven by all of their usual hangouts. None of the bartenders had seen House recently. On a whim, Wilson thought he might have tried to catch a flight out of Princeton. To where, Wilson had no idea, but one thing Wilson learned over the years with House was that it was very helpful to know House's motorcycle tag (license plate) number. Having had to look for House many times before, Wilson had House's motorcycle tag number burnt into memory. He was sure that Cuddy would have given that information to the police already since she probably had a record of his car and motorcycle tag numbers from his employee records at the hospital. But the airport would probably be the last place the cops would search. They were probably still focused on searching the neighborhood.

Wilson figured he might be able to stay a step or two ahead of the cops if he searched the airport parking lot himself.

Sure enough, an hour after he started searching the airport parking lots, there was House's scratched Honda in the orange Repsol paint, parked haphazardly in one of the handicapped spots. His cane was still in the cane clip on the side of the bike, so House couldn't have gotten very far. It was likely he would have boarded the shuttle bus right there at his parking spot and it was even more likely that he would be somewhere close to the shuttle bus drop-off spot at the terminal. He wouldn't be able to get very far without his cane and it wasn't likely he was actually going to board a plane, since it was mighty difficult to strap a suitcase to a motorcycle with no luggage rack and even more difficult to carry a fully loaded backpack when he'd left his cane on his motorcycle.

Suspecting he'd find House within the next few minutes, Wilson parked his car and got on the shuttle bus. There were several terminals and the shuttle stopped at every one of them, so Wilson would just get off at the first terminal. If House wasn't close by, he'd hop back on the shuttle and check out every other terminal until he found his man.

It didn't take long.

The shuttle driver had seen Wilson checking out House's bike. "Nice bike, huh? Who'd a guessed a disabled guy could handle a powerhouse like that. Got to give him credit. He must have some bucks. Them things ain't cheap," the driver said good-naturedly as Wilson boarded the bus.

"You saw him? How long ago?" Wilson cried.

"Early this mornin'. You meetin' him here?" the driver replied.

"Yeah."

"Tell 'im I'll buy his bike if it's for sale," the driver said as they arrived at the shuttle stop at Terminal A. "Have a good trip!"

About fifty feet inside the terminal there was a group seating area for passengers waiting in the ticket line. Several empty wheel chairs were parked by the door. Fortunately the airport wasn't busy because House was stretched out prone on the row of chairs in the ticketing area. No doubt he wouldn't have been able to move much farther than where he was. A large cup of coffee had been knocked over and spilled all over the carpet. An empty Styrofoam container sat on the floor also, full of used napkins and a dirty plastic fork and spoon. An orange pill bottle was lying on the floor next to the Styrofoam container. Its cap was off and pills were scattered around the vial, as if the bottle had fallen out of a pocket and the cap popped off when it hit the floor. Wilson thought quickly and went over and grabbed one of the wheel chairs. House was lying face down across the row of chairs, and using his motorcycle jacket as a pillow. Wilson visually scanned what was visible of the jacket and saw the outline of another pill bottle in House's left jacket pocket. Wilson was afraid to try to wake him up, for fear that he'd have finally died. But he had to try.

Grabbing House's shoulders, he shook hard. "House, wake up! We gotta get out of here."

Without moving an inch, House grumbled, "Say my name one more time. Say it loud, say it proud; why not? They're already hot on my tail anyway."

"Shut up and get in the wheel chair," Wilson hissed.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Are they waiting for me outside the doors? They waiting to lynch me out there?"

"Shut up and get in the chair. We need to talk but not here." Wilson's voice had an unusually commanding tone to it, and House promptly complied. Wilson paraded House down to the baggage carousel and out through the Arrivals door just like anyone else pushing a disabled passenger in a wheel chair, and nobody was any the wiser. They made their way to the parking lot and to Wilson's car completely undetected. It was amazing that airport security hadn't gotten a hold of House before Wilson did.

After they were safely buckled into Wilson's car and out of the parking lot, House spoke up. "So now you're aiding and abetting a fugitive. Did ya grow an extra pair of balls?"

Wilson abruptly wheeled the Volvo onto the shoulder of the highway and shut the engine off. "For once in your life, shut up and listen to me! Man up! I'm not the one who needs to grow more balls. We are going to turn you in and you are going to man up to what you did!"

House smirked at Wilson. "Wanna know what I dreamed after I passed out at the airport? I dreamed I was on a Mexican beach getting hammered."

"I don't know, are you trying to piss me off? You trying to duck the law, evade the issue? Not working."

"No. Just not sure what I'm gonna do next," House replied truthfully.

Staring unrelentingly into House's blue eyes, Wilson said firmly. "I am. You and I both are going to the Princeton PD and turning you in. It'll be better if we turn you in before the cops catch you."

Looking askance at Wilson, House said, "Better for whom?"

"Shut up and listen. You're turning yourself in and I'll be with you. I'm not taking you to your place and I'm not taking you to my place. I'm not dropping you off here and I'm not dropping you off anywhere else."

House immediately tried and failed to unlock his door and get out.

"Good luck. Don't forget, this is a Volvo. I have childproof locks. Your lock has been disabled. You can't get out until I say so. And that's not until we get where we're going," Wilson said.

With that, Wilson peeled off back onto the highway, headed back to Princeton.

"Am I allowed to ask about my bike?" House spat out angrily, like a petulant child.

"I'll take care of it. I'll pay the parking and have it towed back to my place," Wilson replied, looking straight ahead.

Both men remained silent the entire trip from Newark to Princeton and to the Princeton police department. When Wilson's Volvo pulled into the handicapped spot in front of the precinct headquarters, Wilson turned to House as he put the vehicle in park and shut off the ignition.

"Take a few Vicodin and give me the rest. Take all the stuff out of your pockets and give it to me. Do it before we go in," Wilson said firmly.

House looked at Wilson like a rebellious teenager. A few minutes later, though, when Wilson didn't back off, House complied. He took a few Vicodin, emptied his pockets and Wilson took everything else. Wilson took the remaining Vicodin, House's wallet, his motorcycle and car keys (not that the car keys would be of much use any more), House's iPod, the watch Kutner had given House, and a few other odds and ends.

"It's better if they find your pockets empty. You ready?" Wilson asked.

"No. Let's go," House said resignedly, then looked again at Wilson. "I can't go anywhere. You locked me in."

Smiling grimly, Wilson unlocked his own door but not House's. Wilson got out, walked around, unlocked House's door, and offered assistance to his friend.

House shook him off and demanded, "Cane."

"You know they're not going to let you have that in there. Come on." Wilson leaned down so House could put his right arm over Wilson's shoulder. "You can make it in the door with me."

Slowly and resolutely, the two men made their way up the ramp and in through the big doors of the Princeton police department. Wilson stared straight ahead and House's eyes never left the ground.


	2. Chapter 2

The desk sergeant looked up at the sight of a very lame man being helped in by another man, a tired man with one wrist in a splint. The sergeant immediately recognized House's face from a wanted poster.

"Can we have a chair?" Wilson asked.

The sergeant got up, looked at House, and replied, "We've been looking for you."

"I know. Can we have a chair?" Wilson repeated.

The sergeant radioed for backup; not because House was in any way threatening, but because it was policy in the intake department that all incoming prisoners were to be handcuffed. The sergeant had seen plenty of inmates in the intake department use chairs as weapons. He promptly got a chair for House and the assisting officer handcuffed him the minute he sat down.

Addressing Wilson, the desk sergeant said "Sir, you're not allowed in intake. You can wait in the visitor's waiting room if you need to speak with one of the officers, but you won't be able to visit him today."

"I know. He's disabled and just had major leg surgery a few days ago. The incision probably isn't healed yet. He still has stitches in. I just want to make sure he's alright," Wilson said softly.

"He can talk for himself," House mumbled. "He's not an idiot."

"No, but he is stubborn," Wilson said, looking at House with a small smile.

"House, do what they say. They won't let me stay in here but if it'll help you to know I'm out in the waiting room, I'll stay there awhile. I'm sure they'll want to talk to me anyway. You do have something you need to tell the officer, though, before I go out to the waiting room. Say it."

Knowing he had no choice, House kept looking at his lap and in a completely resigned voice he said flatly, "I know there's a warrant out for my arrest and I'm turning myself in."

"Yes sir, there is. Gregory House, you're under arrest and charged with aggravated assault with intent to cause serious bodily injury." Wilson turned around and trudged slowly out of the intake area while the arresting officer read the Miranda rights to House. "You have the right to remain silent…"

The drive home was the longest and loneliest Wilson had endured in years. He'd waited in the jail waiting room for over an hour, but no one came out to talk with him. Apparently they didn't need him; at least not yet. The thought that House likely wasn't getting out for a long time weighed on him like a ton of bricks.

The only thing worse than this drive was the drive home after Amber died. As hard as he tried to clear his mind during the drive, he couldn't help but feel for House, sitting in a holding cell, no doubt lonely, worried, and in a fair amount of pain. Wilson kept rationalizing that House was where he needed to be, that he needed to accept responsibility for his actions for once. All of that was true, but it didn't mitigate the loneliness Wilson was feeling right now, or the concern for House.

They sometimes call the intake area a "reception" area. That's a hell of a name for any part of a jail. The intake/reception area is where the incoming prisoners first step foot into jail. It doesn't matter what the prisoner is accused of; people accused of violent crimes are "received" in the same area as people accused of non-violent crimes. People accused of not paying traffic tickets are "received" in the same common area as people accused of murder. They're handled by jail officials the same way too. People who are guilty of minor offenses such as unpaid traffic tickets are shoved around, manhandled and yelled at just as if they were murderers. Worse yet, they're forced to be in the same community areas as violent, predatory offenders.

No mercy is shown to handicapped prisoners either.

Jail policy where House was "received" was typical of other jails insofar as handling disabled prisoners. Canes, crutches, and other disability aids can be used as weapons and are taken away from prisoners. House was no different. His cane was taken away when he was seated and handcuffed. As much as he tried to put up a sarcastic front, House was secretly terrified because he was vulnerable. When Tritter imprisoned him years ago, he was thrown into a holding cell with another guy and they had taken his cane away from him then too. He could still move around a little bit in the cell because he hadn't just recently had leg surgery. Today was a different matter altogether. Even when they could let him up from the chair he probably wouldn't be able to move because, by then, his leg would have stiffened up to the point where movement without cramping would be impossible. He tried to plead his case with the desk sergeant unsuccessfully.

"I need my cane back."

"Not allowed. When we get through here, you'll be seen by the nurse and a determination will be made at that time if you can have a jail issued cane or a wheel chair."

"I want MY cane."

"Not allowed. Wooden canes can be broken down into hundreds of weapons. If you get a jail issued cane it will be a metal one and the nurse will make that determination. I need to finish your intake. Please state your name."

House began to fidget with the handcuffs. His hands were cuffed in front of him. Another deputy in the intake area saw him fidgeting and, like tigers waiting to pounce, several officers ran over. Apparently they were trained to perceive any fidgeting with the cuffs as an attempt to get out of the handcuffs, and they reacted accordingly.

"Put your hands up over your head!" someone yelled.

"Hands up, now!" another deputy shouted.

Shocked, House's cuffed hands shot up before he could say anything. His leg hurt and he had just been trying to get in a position where he could rub his leg most effectively.

One of the deputies grabbed his hands roughly, uncuffed him, jerked his arms around behind his back and cuffed him again.

"You could've asked me nicely. I'm not threatening anyone. My leg hurts," House spat out angrily.

"Stop fidgeting with the cuffs. Answer the questions."

"Gregory House," he said, completely defeated.

"Address?"

The sergeant went through his list of questions and House answered everything in a completely flat, monotonous, soft voice. By the time they'd finished the short list of questions, House's voice could barely be heard. Going through intake was humiliating to say the least. The whole purpose seemed to be to strip prisoners of all dignity. He knew he belonged behind bars, but the whole process was almost more demeaning and humiliating than he could bear.

At the conclusion of the sergeant's questions, House asked, "Can I see the nurse now?"

"She'll be over when she has time."

_Shit._ "I'm sorry, but I really need to see the nurse now. My leg hurts a lot," House said in a very small voice. He tried to sound as non-threatening as possible, even while knowing that almost anything he said would come across as a threat or an attempt to challenge the officers. House had had enough experience with cops to know that they don't like prisoners talking to them unless it's to answer a question.

"And I said she'll be over when she has time."

_Oh boy._

A deputy came over to escort him to a holding cell. With his hands cuffed behind his back, and no cane or wheel chair, House wasn't entirely sure how he was going to stand up, let alone walk those few feet to the holding cell. The officer ordered him to stand up.

"I'm not sure I can."

House assumed the deputy would support him on his right side and let him try to stand, but two seconds later, another deputy came over with a wheel chair. Wordlessly, the two deputies grabbed him roughly under his armpits, hauled him into the wheel chair and pushed him into the holding cell.

Once inside the holding cell, they helped him out of the wheel chair. They could see that House was really in a lot of pain and he wasn't trying to resist them. They softened up a little. "I know this isn't easy for you. It ain't easy on anyone. This your first time behind bars?" one of the deputies asked.

Realizing again that sarcasm would just get him in deeper with these people than he already was, he said softly, "No, but I just had major surgery on my leg a few days ago. I'm not lying when I say it hurts. If it takes me a little while to do something that you ask me to do, it's not because I'm resisting. I hurt all the time and it's particularly bad now."

As the deputies turned to leave the cell, House debated whether or not he should open his mouth one more time. He needed to use the phone. Finally he said, "I need to use the phone."

There were no phones in the holding cells. There was a community area outside the cells that had several phones, and each inmate received a numeric code as part of the intake process that would give them access to the phone.

One of the deputies said, "Phones are broken. Everyone is on lockdown until the phone guys fix the phones. It'll have to wait." Just before he left the cell, the deputy removed his cuffs and said "Turn around, face the wall, and put your hands on the wall until you hear the door close. Do not move until you hear the door close."

House complied. When he heard the door close and could finally try to move around a little, he went to work massaging his thigh until the stiffness let up just enough that he could move a little bit. Getting up gingerly, he stood for just a moment before sitting back down again. This was a large holding cell, big enough for twenty or so men, with one toilet, one sink, and no privacy. House was currently the only occupant, but judging from all the commotion outside the cell, he doubted that he'd be alone in there for much longer.

There was a bench mounted to the wall that ran the length of the three walls. House was seated on one end of the bench. The toilet was on the other side of the cell. Nature was calling. With no way of supporting his right leg, the only way he could make it to the toilet was to scoot the entire length of the bench until he got to the toilet, then stand and pivot to the toilet seat. There was no way he'd be able to stand long enough to take care of business the way he normally would.

Deciding to take advantage of the fact that he was alone temporarily, he took care of that need before the cell started filling up with other degenerates.


	3. Chapter 3

All the inmates in reception/intake were currently on lockdown because the phone guys were due any minute to fix the phones. The phones were in a common area where inmates normally were allowed to gather after they'd been processed, and it was not safe to allow inmates out of their cells when the repair people were there. Therefore, regardless of where they were in the intake process, all inmates in the reception area were immediately locked down in cells to make the area safe for the phone repairmen.

Typical of the way most things operate in jail though, the time it would take to repair the phones could vary from a few minutes to days. There was no guarantee House would be making any phone calls tonight.

They had a large TV high up on the wall in the intake area where inmates couldn't reach it to break it. A staff member probably had the remote. The TV could not be heard over all the din the other inmates were making while locked down in other holding cells. House didn't care about the TV anyway.

His stomach was rumbling. He hadn't had anything to eat in hours. He was locked in just like everyone else. He figured he wouldn't see a guard for another hour or two, and even then, he figured he'd better keep his mouth shut. Asking for anything, including food, was likely not to get him anything but further trouble.

Time passed slowly. He couldn't see the clock on the wall. The nurse did come by as promised, but with the inmates on lockdown, she wasn't allowed inside the cells unless it was a true emergency. A detailed physical exam was not possible. She did get a basic medical history. She was able to give him a couple of ibuprofen and she started him on some Ativan as part of the detox program. House would be started on gabapentin for pain and a more extensive detox program, but that would have to wait until she could do a hands-on physical exam. None of that was possible while the inmates were on lockdown. Ibuprofen would have to do for now. It occurred to House, while the nurse was interviewing him from outside his cell, that the jail infirmary probably didn't have gabapentin which would mean they'd have to order it, and the delay could be lengthy.

He had nothing but time on his hands. After an unknown period of time, the phone people finally showed up, but whatever they did to try to fix the inmate phones evidently didn't work. House anxiously studied their body language trying to determine how complicated the problem was. It didn't look promising.

About three hours later when he saw a guard pass his cell, House hazarded a question. "Are the phones working yet?"

"We'll take everyone off lockdown when they're working." That was the only answer.

There was nothing to do but sit there, worry, and try to forget about the rumbling in his stomach and the pain in his leg. The Ativan barely took the edge off his nerves, which were getting jumpier by the minute as he thought about his immediate future, going through withdrawal in jail. Before his relapse, ibuprofen helped the pain. It never completely took it away; nothing did. But it did help, and it was manageable. Now, however, considering the amount of Vicodin he threw down after the relapse, ibuprofen could hardly be expected to alleviate a headache let alone the fire raging in his leg. That last Vicodin he'd taken while in Wilson's car had worn off long ago. Not to mention that ibuprofen really doesn't sit well on an empty stomach. Lord, how he wanted just a sandwich or something. Something.

Unfortunately, the sandwiches were passed out shortly thereafter. The guard who passed one to House smiled when House snatched his food ravenously. Obviously House had never eaten jailhouse sandwiches. The intake area only had seven holding cells. House's cell was about the fifth or sixth cell the guard had visited with the sandwiches. None of the occupants in the first four or five cells took any sandwiches, so the pile of sandwiches on the cart was still pretty high when he got to House's cell. It never occurred to House to ask why there were still so many sandwiches left by the time they got to his cell, but even if it had, he was learning quickly to keep his mouth shut around the guards. He was about to discover jailhouse cuisine at its finest. He was so ravenous he would have eaten paste, but the bologna sandwiches they passed out were absolutely revolting. The bologna was green. His choice was either eat the revolting green bologna or go hungry overnight. Knowing what was coming in the next few days, perhaps it would have been better to go into it with an empty stomach, but at the moment, his growling stomach was winning the argument. He closed his eyes, steeled himself and wolfed down his green bologna and room temperature milk. He grabbed a trash can to be prepared for his stomach to reject the disgusting stuff. At least it would alleviate the hunger for a little while. The guard saw him eat the green crap, shook his head and went on to the next cell.

House wasn't sure if he should be grateful or sorry that the disgusting stuff stayed down. Sooner or later, it was going to come out. He didn't want that to happen in the middle of a roomful of men with no privacy, but one of the sacrifices an inmate makes in jail is privacy. There would never be any privacy, now or later. It didn't make any difference if he was alone or with a roomful of men. He was always going to have to dress, undress, use the toilet and shower in full view of everyone. He knew that sometime within the next few days, he was going to gain at least one roommate and would have to go through all the ugliness of withdrawal in public.

As the evening wore on with no hope of getting the phones fixed anytime soon, another problem became apparent. House's stitches needed to be checked and his dressing needed to be changed. The dressing was actually falling down his leg. He was still in street clothes because they hadn't had a chance to issue him prison clothes and prison shoes yet. He was wearing a tee shirt and pants that still had dust on them from Cuddy's house, and Nikes with no shoelaces. They made him take his shoelaces out during the desk sergeant's initial questioning. He really had no need for a shoe on his right foot since he was barely able to touch it to the ground. The nurse was going to have to attend to his leg since inmates weren't allowed to keep wound care materials in their cells. Someone had told House that gauze and tape could be used to make weapons. _Really!_ thought House. _I'd like to meet the genius who can make a lethal weapon out of gauze and tape._

He didn't know if it was good or bad that the phone repair people had left for the evening. On one hand, it meant that cooperative inmates could be let out of the holding cells. On the other hand, the phones still weren't working, so nobody could make any calls. House desperately wanted to call Wilson if for no other reason than just to hear his voice on the other end of the line. He needed that familiarity in this strange new environment.

When House and the other cooperative inmates were let out of the holding cells, there was a mad rush for the phones even though one of the deputies made a loud announcement over the PA system that everyone should stay away from the phones because they still weren't working. House couldn't really move all that well. When the guard arrived at his cell to unlock it, he couldn't get up. That put him in an ironic position. Inmates in the intake area could not be left in holding cells with the doors open. In the event that another inmate would run in and attack them, anyone left in a cell with the door open would be a sitting duck. So even when lockdown was lifted and the other inmates were free to leave their cells, House needed to remain behind a locked door for his own safety. The nurse came in with a deputy to examine him more thoroughly. It was so demeaning and he felt so low just to think he was actually grateful for a strange nurse to examine a part of him that he normally wouldn't let anyone but Wilson see.

She examined the wound, cleaned it gently, applied steri-strips to the places in the wound where the stitches had come out, and applied a new gauze dressing. Mobility was the next issue to be addressed. "I know your friend has your cane. We can't allow wooden canes because they can be broken down into hundreds of weapons. We can't allow personal metal canes from home because they can be used to hide contraband. I'm sorry but it's jail policy here and pretty much everywhere else too. We can issue you a cane, walker or wheel chair. They're jail property. They're all numbered so we can keep track of them. Inmates who use canes, walkers or wheel chairs are subject to more frequent searches than other inmates because even though they're jail property they can still be used as weapons or to hide contraband. Which would you rather have?"

Still very unused to being ordered around and told what to do, especially by a nurse, House was reluctant to answer. He wasn't resisting her. It was that he felt so ashamed, so low and worthless now that it sometimes seemed to him it wasn't worth answering questions.

But if he was ever going to get off that bench and get finished with the intake process, he was going to have to get some kind of mobility aid. "A cane is fine," he answered slowly. She produced one of the ugly metal canes that he used to make fun of. He took a long look at it and accepted it from her. It didn't even fit him, and when he tried to adjust the length to make it fit him, the mechanism that adjusted the length was rusted and wouldn't budge. The cane was a little too short for him, but it was either that or nothing so it would have to do.

House wasn't finished with the intake process yet. They'd put all the inmates in the intake area on lockdown before he could be fingerprinted and photographed. He would also need to be issued prison clothing, prison shoes and prison bedding but currently the only beds available were upper bunks. House needed a lower bunk. So until a lower bunk opened up somewhere, there was no where to house him except in the intake area. That meant he wasn't going to get a bed anytime soon. "Bed", for now, until a permanent cell became available, was going to have to be a bench in his holding cell. At least he was able to move around well enough now, with the aid of the crappy cane, to leave the holding cell and get fingerprinted and photographed.

Then the true horror came. Part of being an inmate is being strip searched. The first time that usually happens is when the inmate is issued his first set of prison clothes and prison shoes. Part of being strip searched is the anal cavity inspection. The guards do this by asking the inmate to squat and cough. House couldn't do that, so it was time for the fickle finger exam.

"Time to strip out." House wasn't handcuffed any more and had his prison issued cane. The guard walked behind him and a little to his right side since House was still moving slower and more unsteady than usual on his feet. He was escorted to the strip area. There was no privacy. There really couldn't be, for everyone's safety. They were searching for contraband.

"Strip down to your briefs," the guard commanded. The first search was completed.

Another guard came over in case House needed help to bend over.

"Remove your briefs. He's in front of you if you need help. Bend over as far as you can."

SNAP went the gloves. Up went the finger. _Oh my god,_ House moaned silently. A new indignity to become accustomed to.

House was then handed his prison ID badge, his prison issued blue shirt, blue pants, blue shower shoes, and told to get dressed. "Mercer County DOC" it said across the back of his shirt and down both pant legs. Normally he'd also be issued his own bedding and taken up to his cell, but since they didn't have a bed available and he wouldn't have been able to carry his own bedding anyway, he was escorted out to the common area.

"Sit down. Put this badge on. Inmates are to wear their badges on their shirts at all times. You lose the badge, you get handcuffed, put on lockdown until they can make you a new one, and written up. Don't move from this chair. If you must move, ask a guard first. You're being housed in the intake area until a suitable permanent cell opens up. We have beds available but they're all upper bunks. We're gonna have to wait for a lower bunk to open up. See that red line around the room? That's out of bounds. Inmates are not allowed out of bounds."

House remained standing, in shock, still trying to soak in his new reality.

The guard stepped closer. "I said sit down."

House startled back to reality, and complied.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N – I'm not a lawyer or in any other way involved with the American justice system. I won't promise that all the jail policy and procedure information in this story is accurate; it's as good as I can get. The information here about the US justice system is gleaned partly from research and partly from all the "Jail", "Lockup Extended Stay", and "Hard Time" episodes I've seen on TV here in America. Our local county jail was featured several times in one of those shows.**

Now that processing was completed, House was officially a Mercer County Department of Corrections inmate. Inmate number 020406. That was his inmate number, that was his telephone code (when and if the phones were ever fixed) and that was his new identity. He was no longer "House". He was either "Gregory House", or "020406". His name, photograph, fingerprints and criminal record were now part of a nationwide criminal justice database. He hadn't been "convicted" of anything yet since that would have to happen in trial, but having been processed as an inmate and now serving time in jail, that information would be available to any law enforcement officer if he was ever involved in anything as simple as even a traffic stop. Life had changed permanently.

House stayed glued to his chair in a fog of disbelief. He stared at all the other criminals around him, trying to figure out what they were in for. The room was divided, males from females. Males were seated in one half of the room and females were seated in the other half. Most of the inmates appeared to have some sort of level of comfort with their surroundings, laughing and talking with each other as if they'd been here before. Some, like House, were too terrified to do anything other than stare straight ahead. Eye contact with anyone else might be interpreted as actually _fraternizing_ with these people, these criminals.

Eventually, House slowly lost some of his fear and began to gaze at the other people in the room. His analytical nature began to resurface. _She's a hooker,_ he thought, looking at one particular woman closely. _I've seen her before. Hell, I've probably done her before._ He even thought he recognized one woman as a former clinic patient of his. _Isn't that funny? I don't remember them two seconds after I walk out of the exam room but I remember them when I see them in jail._ Then he turned his attention to the men's half of the room. As he gazed at the men, many of them returned his gaze, and the stares were not friendly. They were sizing him up too. _Murderer. Car thief. Bank robber. Drug addict._ No, wait. Being a drug addict isn't necessarily illegal. It's what you do while you're under the influence of drugs, or as a result of being a drug addict, that could be illegal. _Stop being so judgmental. I'm one of those people now. I'm a degenerate just like them._

The ibuprofen was actually beginning to kick in a little. So was the Ativan. It took longer than it would have in someone who wasn't used to taking narcotic pain meds, but at least he was getting a little relief. He wanted to talk to the nurse about starting his detox program. Hagar the Horrible and friends were still on guard duty in the intake area, and House was slowly losing his fear of these guards.

"Hey," House called out softly but a little more assertively than earlier.

"I'll get to you when I can," replied Hagar from across the room. He was dealing with an unruly inmate.

"Hey!" House called out after the commotion with the other inmate died down; roughly five minutes later.

Hagar walked over to House. "What?"

"I need to talk to the nurse about detox." A scowl was beginning to form on House's face. He couldn't wait hours and hours to start the detox program. These guys didn't seem to be in too much of a hurry. If they didn't give him something else in the next hour or two, he'd be in big trouble. The Ativan he'd gotten earlier was helping but it wouldn't be enough. He would need to start on something else for pain at the same time.

"I'll get her now. If she's with another inmate it might have to wait."

He didn't have long to wait this time. She came out to see House again pretty quickly. Hagar must have told her about the need to start House on the detox program.

"What can I do for you?" The nurse came over with another guard.

"I need something else, something stronger than ibuprofen, for pain. My leg is really hurting. I've already started detoxing from Vicodin. The Ativan helped a little but I'm going to need something stronger."

"Sure. Let me get you started on our standard detox medication regimen and then I'll explain how detox works here."

She came back a few minutes later, again with the guard, with a dose of Suboxone. House recognized the medication immediately before she ever had a chance to tell him what it was. Suboxone contains buprenorphine.

"No buprenorphine. I've been on that stuff before. It didn't help. I'll go cold turkey before I go on that stuff again."

"Ok, we can use tapering doses of Methadone. After you're through detoxing, we'll need to keep you on something for pain but it will not be a narcotic. We don't keep any other narcotics here. I'll need to have the doctor see you in the morning about what kind of maintenance pain medication you should be on. We usually use Gabapentin, but we can use Methadone too. In the meantime, I'll get you started on Methadone."

"Good. I was on Methadone for a little while a long time ago and it worked well. I had to stop taking it because it dulled my mind too much. In here, though, I think a dull mind might actually be a good thing," he said softly, with a bitter sense of irony.

"Ok then. I'll be back in a jiff with your first Methadone dose."

She must not have been otherwise busy, because she came back a few minutes later with his first dose of Methadone. Other inmates saw the Methadone, too. Narcotic addicts who have ever been through any kind of detox before usually recognize Methadone by the sight of the green liquid. House immediately because the subject of interest of about half a dozen other inmates, who started walking over towards him even after several guards had shouted at them to shut up and sit down. The nurse backed away a few steps until the other guards regained control of the unruly inmates.

"That's why we don't keep other narcotics here," the nurse said to House softly as she walked back over to him.

"About 80% of the inmate population here goes through detox when they're admitted. We try to keep jail detox as humane and gentle as we can, but detox is detox and nobody likes doing it in jail. We don't have the luxury of being able to do rapid detox; that's only done in a hospital. Our standard detox works like this. I or one of the other nurses will give you your Methadone at standard intervals and examine you. As long as you're in intake, we'll come over to intake and give it to you. Once they move you to a regular cell, we'll come to your cell to give it. If the vomiting gets too bad we'll move you to the infirmary and we can put an IV in for hydration. That's pretty much how it works."

"Ok."

With that, the nurse left.

House noticed as time went by that there seemed to be a pattern to inmate movement there. About every hour a group of people would come in one end of the room, and at the same time, about five or six inmates who had been in the intake area would line up in front of an elevator at the other end of the room. At least one guard would escort the line of new inmates in through the one end of the room, and another guard would escort the other five or six inmates up the elevator. The inmates coming in at the far end of the room had street clothes on. The inmates going up the elevator had prison stuff on. House guessed the inmates going up the elevator were not able to make bail, being held without bail, or hadn't had bail set yet, and were being escorted to cells. The inmates in street clothes had probably just been arrested and hadn't been through the intake process yet. The ones coming in looked very angry, scared to death or too stoned to care. Most of the ones going up to cells looked like they knew the routine already, like it was familiar, like they had done it many times before.

The noise level in the intake area never seemed to drop below a roar. Some people were quiet, but a few inmates were very loud. The few that were so disruptive made everyone irritable. Guards yelled one more time for them to be quiet, and the ones that didn't obey got popped into a restraint chair and hauled off to a holding cell. One by one, the disruptive inmates disappeared into holding cells. The yelling didn't stop. It just moved. It moved from the common seating area to the holding cells. Even though the disruptive inmates were now locked in holding cells, the place was still loud.

By 10 pm the phones still weren't working and House had had enough. He was tired, crabby, and he needed to call Wilson. Enough was enough. He asked for the guard's attention, and when the guard came over, he said "I need to make a phone call."

The intake area was lined with offices on one wall, a wall-to-wall desk for the second wall, and holding cells made up the other two walls. The common seating area, for inmates who weren't locked down, was in the middle. A guard behind the desk was doing computer work and handling another inmate's bail. Inmates were allowed to approach the desk as long as they stayed behind the red boundary line. House asked the guard if he could go up to the desk and he was allowed to do so. He stood in line, not very patiently, behind the inmate whose bail was being taken care of.

When the inmate in front of him had posted bail and the guard behind the desk was free to help House, the guard said "May I help you?" in a flat tone of voice that clearly meant _Do I have to help you _instead.

"The phones out there aren't working and I need to make a phone call. I haven't been able to make a phone call yet."

"Sir, you'll have to wait until they're fixed."

"When will that be?"

"I don't know."

"I'm entitled to a phone call, right?"

"Yes."

"Then can I use your phone?"

"It's not allowed."

House was in an uncomfortable position again. Guards don't like inmates to talk unless they're asked a question. House observed that all of the guards behaved like this. It seemed to make them feel wary when inmates spoke too much, and from what he had seen so far today, inmates had acted out sufficiently to give the guards reason to be wary. Sometimes it's better just to shut up. When had he ever heard that before?

Problem was, something had to be done about the phone situation. House just needed to talk to Wilson tonight. He needed the reassurance of hearing Wilson's voice. He didn't want to risk setting the guards off, though. _How to get her to let me use that phone!_

"I'm a doctor and I'm on call tonight. I need to call my colleague and make sure my on call hours are covered by someone else."

The guard looked at him like she'd heard this excuse before, and wasn't about to buy it for one minute.

"These phones are off limits to inmates. Inmates have to use the inmate phones."

With his best pleading look in his eyes, and trying to look as nonthreatening as possible, House begged her. "Please. I'm an obstetrician. I could be called in at any minute to deliver a baby. I just need to call my colleague. It's an emergency. Please."

With that, she looked around her quickly and said "For a few minutes. This is the only time, though. After this you have to wait until the inmate phones are fixed, or wait until you get moved to a cell."

She dialed the number House gave her, and handed the receiver to House.

Knowing that Wilson would think this was code of some kind, House quickly rattled off "Hi, I'm fine. I'm on call tonight. Lotta babies due soon. I need you to take call for me. I'll call you when they tell me what my bail is. I think my hearing is in another day or so." Then House shut up for a minute and let Wilson talk. House didn't need to answer Wilson. It was just good to hear him talk. The phone call ended and the guard was none the wiser as to House's lie.

House made his way, under the watchful eye of another guard in the inmate common seating area, back to his seat. The Methadone and Ativan together were doing wonders. He wasn't completely pain free, but then he never was. This was as good as it was going to get. The jitters were also being held at bay with the medication, and it wasn't long after House sat down again that he mercifully fell asleep.

Sometime around midnight he woke up again. Sleeping in a chair isn't comfortable for anyone, let alone a disabled guy. Someone was calling his name. Apparently he'd been uncuffed during his sleep. The guards were allowed to uncuff cooperative inmates in the common seating area. Several times he heard his name called but it took him awhile to fully wake up. "020406 House!" "Gregory House!" could be heard over a loudspeaker. Finally a guard approached him and tapped him on the shoulder. "Gregory House! Come on, time to go upstairs. Your cell is ready."

"I haven't talked to my lawyer yet because the phones down here aren't working."

"You can call from upstairs. Let's go." It was standard procedure, when moving inmates from one housing area to another, that they had to be handcuffed behind their backs and escorted by a guard. It was no different with House. He was learning quickly. Put your hands behind your back and let them cuff you. Don't give them any trouble. How he was going to make it up the elevator with his hands cuffed behind his back was House's concern; obviously not the guards'. The guard who was escorting him supported him on the right, and the three of them managed to make it up the elevator without too much of a problem. A second guard followed close behind with House's prison-issued bedding and prison-issued towels, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and shampoo.

They stepped out of the elevator onto the fifth floor. House was immediately greeted with a big sign painted on white cinderblock walls. "5MCDOC Men". In other words, 5th floor, Mercer County Department of Corrections, Men.

Cell number 21, bunk B. The A bunk was the top bunk. A disheveled, smelly, ape-like man lay draped across the top bunk snoring like a chain saw.

"Meet your cellie. Lights out now. The cuffs stay on until we leave the cell. Then you back up and stick your hands out the food port so we can uncuff you."

Welcome to hell.


	5. Chapter 5

**This chapter is pretty full of pathos. I like to write pathos. Be warned, there is a graphic depiction of what it's like to be in the full throes of detox, violence and some foul language too. It's all part of a realistic depiction of jail life. No Wilson and no lawyer yet in this chapter, but they're coming up soon!**

After they uncuffed him, House sat down in the dark cell on his lower bunk. He had a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, the metal cane, a few towels, prison-issued clothes and prison-issued shoes. That's all. Oh, that and his sanity; at least for a little while. He still had his sanity.

He needed to call a lawyer, but at the moment, exhaustion and the looming detox were more important than calling the lawyer. The lawyer could wait, at least for a little while, until his mind was clear.

The cellmate was also a concern. How long he would last with a cellie depended on how his detox went. Chances were pretty good that, in a few hours, the cellie would be screaming to get another cell.

In the meantime, House laid down in the dark on his uncomfortable bunk and closed his eyes. In a few hours, any kind of restful sleep would be impossible.

The restlessness and nausea started about 2 am. _It's happening too quickly,_ thought House. _Where's the nurse?_

Big Fat Smelly Guy grumbled from the upper bunk, "Shut the fuck up and go to sleep."

"And I'm House," House snarled, in no mood to suppress his natural sarcasm. He didn't feel good, he knew it was getting a lot worse very quickly, and he didn't give a damn what his cellie thought.

BFSG rolled over, dropped his head down and looked straight into House's eyes. Enunciating slowly, as if talking to a moron, he said, "I said, shut the fuck up. Don't mess with me."

"Actually, you should have said don't mess ON you. I'm detoxing, and if YOU don't shut up, I'm gonna heave that green bologna shit right in your face."

BFSG commenced beating the living tar out of House. BFSG had something big and solid in the toe of one of his socks. It made contact with the side of House's head at least once. It hit him with the force of a hundred human punches all at once. House managed to roll away from him and get a guard's attention before the beat down got too much worse. When it was all over with, House looked, oddly enough, happy. He had two big black eyes, blood and a smile on his face. He'd accomplished his goal. By 2:15 House had the cell to himself and four guards had hauled BFSG over to solitary confinement.

House was also escorted to the infirmary for evaluation of the wounds on his face. There were a few cuts requiring stitches but nothing more serious than that. When asked what happened, House wisely kept his mouth shut. In jail or prison, you don't tattle on anyone. Payback's a bitch. He'd already had enough of a beat down to know he didn't want any more. "Nothing happened. I fell."

The guard said, "We know something happened. We found the lock in his sock. We know he hit you with it. I need to hear your side of the story."

"I told you. I got up in the dark to take a leak and I fell."

"You don't get two black eyes and cuts all over your face from falling unless someone hits you there first."

"I fell. By myself. That's all."

Knowing the unwritten rule among inmates that you don't tattle on anyone, the guard realized the futility of trying to get any more information. House hadn't even been there 24 hours yet and he'd already caught on to that.

The prison doctor was in the process of stitching up his cuts with the guard present.

"Ok. When he's done you'll be escorted back to your cell."

House sat on the side of the stretcher in the prison infirmary, while the doctor finished stitching up the cuts. His hands were handcuffed, this time in front of him so that he could still use his cane to assist with walking. The nurse, standing in the back of the room, nervously watched his hands. She wasn't used to seeing inmates with their hands cuffed in front of them. Inmates brought back to the infirmary, especially after a fight, always had their hands cuffed behind them. She'd been assaulted by unruly inmates enough to know that someone with their hands cuffed in front of them still wields a lot of power and can do a lot of damage.

House astutely noticed that she was nervous. "Relax, I'm not going to kill you," he said in an irritated tone of voice.

She looked back at him with a gaze that clearly said she didn't believe a word he said.

"I don't expect anyone to believe me," House said. He was jittery and was beginning to have trouble sitting still. Goose pimples were starting to appear on his arms and legs. He was freezing cold and dangerously close to puking.

"Is the detox bad yet?" the doctor asked.

"No, but it's happening quicker than it ever has before."

Addressing the nurse, the doctor said, "Start him on the usual protocol. Valium and Ondansetron now, then next dose of Methadone in the morning." Turning to House, the doctor said, "I know you're a doctor. Our standard detox regimen is Ondansetron for the nausea and Valium for mild sedation. Since you also have a physical need for pain relief, we'll include Methadone too. Our prison pharmacy is very limited and that is what we provide for standard narcotic detoxification. The first doses of Valium and Ondansetron are IM and after that everything is by mouth. The nurses will bring your meds to your cell. They have to watch you take them. Inmates are not allowed to stockpile medications in their cell."

So many inmates entering the jail system are under the influence of something when they come in that jails typically have a standard detox regimen. House was glad they had one here.

Accustomed to giving injections to extremely violent inmates, the nurse was an expert at giving shots quickly. House was very cooperative, but even cooperative inmates can turn uncooperative in a split second, especially when they're detoxing. Before he knew it the needle hit home.

He sat there for a few more minutes and it wasn't long before the Valium and Ondansetron began to take effect. These initial doses didn't knock him out. They just took the edge off the nerves and the nausea.

The guard escorted him back to his cell. Even though everyone was in bed for the night, catcalls and all kinds of other noise erupted from the other inmates as they saw him being escorted in the hallway. Even though it was almost 3 am, the noise level was incredible. It sounded like Saturday night at Ozzfest. Hell, with the handcuffs, the drugs and the cops, it FELT like Saturday night at Ozzfest, too. The only places lights were actually "out" were in the cells. Everywhere _outside_ of the cells was lit just as brightly as during the day.

Once back inside his cell, he didn't have to be told again to wait until the door was closed, then stick his hands out the food port to be uncuffed.

Satisfied with being alone in the cell, House tried to adjust to the fact that it was after 3 am yet the lights outside of all the cells were just as bright as day. He'd never been a sound sleeper at night unless under the influence of alcohol or a sleeping pill. Even the Vicodin didn't knock him out enough to get a good night's sleep. His chronic insomnia would be worse here with most of the lights on 24 hours a day. The only place where it was dark was inside his cell. He didn't have a light switch in his cell, and he doubted anyone else did either. He thought they probably controlled all the lights from a central guard station. He figured they probably needed things lit like this for safety, but still, it was very unnerving trying to sleep in a dark cell with bright artificial light pouring in from the window in his door.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. The Valium was at least beginning to relax him a little more. Thoughts of detox flooded his mind.

He wished he could face this round of detoxification completely ignorant of what was to come. Sometimes not knowing what you're in for is actually better than the alternative.

Sleep mercifully claimed him, but only for a few hours. Lights came back on at about 5:30 am. A loud wake up call was blasted over the jail's PA system. It had to be loud to be heard over the constant, unceasing din created by the other inmates. The noise never seemed to stop. Time for breakfast.

Oh, joy. The guards came by each cell, doing the morning count and making sure each inmate was up. House anxiously waited for the cell doors to open. No such luck. When the count was done, another pair of guards started passing breakfast trays to each inmate through the food ports in their doors. For some reason, everyone was on lockdown today. Something must have happened during the night. Who the hell knew?

The sight of breakfast being shoved through the food port in his door almost pushed him over the edge. The green bologna shit in his stomach was threatening to make a reappearance. The Valium and Ondansetron from two hours ago were still coursing through his system but hell even that might not be enough to keep the cork on his stomach. Just seeing those cold, congealed scrambled eggs was nauseating.

The guards had already moved on to the next cell. His food port was now locked from the outside, so House shoved his untouched food tray out from underneath his door.

"You trying to throw food?" one of the guards hollered.

"No. I'm trying to give you back the tray before I puke all over it."

Wordlessly, a guard came back and picked up his untouched tray. House just glared at him.

A few minutes later, a guard made another appearance. "6 am. Time to get up." House had gone back to bed. He was lying on his bunk trying to let the Valium and Ondansetron lull him back to sleep.

The guard announced that it was House's time to shower. House had been told that showers were scheduled. He couldn't just shower whenever he wanted. Missing a scheduled shower meant having to wait until at least the following morning for another chance to shower.

"Not today," came the answer from under the covers in the bunk.

Shower time was scheduled for security reasons. Inmates in the shower are vulnerable to attack by other inmates. House chose to skip his shower today because he was already freezing cold and he wasn't in the full throes of detox yet. A shower tomorrow would be much better. From his bunk, he watched other inmates being escorted to and from the shower. They were escorted in handcuffs. House wondered if they were uncuffed in the shower or if they had to figure out how to shower in handcuffs. Did the guards watch them in the shower? Ick.

Shivering and perspiring in his cell, House found himself praying for the nurse to come by soon with his next dose of meds. He closed his eyes and studied the inside of his eyelids. Even though he was still feeling the effects of the Valium, sleep did not come. He hoped she would give his medications in an injectable form since he doubted he would keep any oral medications down.

Shortly thereafter, he could hear what he swore were the soft footsteps of a nurse wearing tennis shoes. Tap, tap, tap. In the hospital, nurses pushed medication carts down the hallway to each patient room. Here, the nurse came to his cell with a paper tray. On the paper tray was a paper cup with his oral medications and a paper cup with a little water in it.

"That's just going to come right back up," House said mid-shiver from his bunk. "Can I get it in shot form?"

"Let's try the Ondansetron first. We can wait an hour or so and then give the rest of the meds. Ondansetron acts quickly and I think you'll be able to hold it down long enough for it to work. If you can't hold it down, yeah, we can give it as a shot."

House realized something else. In jail, there must be many patients going through detox at the same time. House wasn't the only one. Like everything else in this God-forsaken place, nurse visits and medications for inmates in general population were on a schedule. When the nurse said she'd come back in an hour or so, House figured it would be more like a couple of hours.

"I'll take them all now."

The guard accompanying the nurse unlocked House's food port, took the cups from the nurse and handed them to House through the food port. The guard then locked the food port.

House put the cups on his little shelf, took the Ondansetron and left everything else to be taken in another hour.

"I need to watch you swallow everything," the nurse said.

"I'll just throw them up. I need to wait for the Ondansetron to take effect."

"And since you said you wanted them all now, I need to watch you swallow them all now. Either take them now or give them back."

"If I give them back you won't be back here in an hour. I'll be lucky if I see you in four hours."

"If you don't take them now or give them back now, we're going in to remove them. That's a cell extraction. You don't want that. Inmates are not allowed to stockpile medications in their cells. Take them now or give them back now. That's your only choice and this is your last warning," the guard said.

"No."

Instantly the guard called out over his radio for the cell extraction team. Within thirty seconds the team was at House's cell in full riot gear. The guard in front had the pepper spray. "Inmate House, you are ordered to comply with the medical team request to take your medications now or hand them over now."

He'd pushed them as far as he could. House had always been a rule breaker when breaking rules was necessary for the good of his patients. In here, though, there was no give-and-take. Rule breaking always had bad consequences. The question was, were the bad consequences worth breaking the rules?

House thought about flushing them down the toilet just to piss them off; then he thought better of that. Pissing off the people who have control over the medications is like biting the hand that feeds you. He complied and came forward stoically with the cup full of remaining medications. A guard unlocked his food port and House handed the cup full of medications over to the guard.

The cell extraction team left. House sighed. Another defeat, another battle of the wills lost.

Alone in his cell again, House began to will the Ondansetron to work. He tried to pretend that he had some semblance of control over anything. That's really all the battle of the medications was about anyway. He was trying to exact some measure of control over something in his life. Doesn't work in jail, though.

Sure enough, within about half an hour, the nausea subsided for the time being. House was freezing; not because he was cold but because detox screws with the temperature regulation system in the brain, makes the person think they're cold, and makes the person shiver. His leg was telling him in no uncertain terms it was time for the next Methadone dose. Detoxing from narcotics also screws with the pain receptors in the brain. House had certainly had prior experience with that in Mayfield. What would ordinarily be minor discomfort or bearable pain suddenly became unbearable agony while detoxifying. Narcotics suppress pain receptors in the brain. This is the intended effect when they're taken as directed. Overuse of narcotics suppresses the pain receptors too much. Then when the narcotics are gone or weaned off, those pain receptors can kick into overdrive. Overuse also suppresses the respiratory center which is what usually results in death from asphyxia.

House had nothing else to do but think through all of this. He could just imagine his own pain receptors waking up after being overly suppressed for so long. After all, before he was arrested, he'd downed almost a month's worth of Vicodin in just a couple of days. Whether or not he was lucky he hadn't died was a matter of opinion. Someone else would say he was lucky he hadn't died. House's own opinion was that maybe he'd be better off dead. Not that he was thinking of killing himself now; but maybe he should have deliberately missed the pool when he jumped off his hotel balcony. Then none of this would have happened. Irrationally injecting himself with an untested drug, the resultant tumors, his even more irrational decision to cut open his own leg, hurting and alienating the only person he cared about, none of that would have happened if he'd just missed the damn pool.

He shook himself. Compromise is never the answer. Killing himself to avoid his problems would be a compromise. Numbing himself out with Vicodin obviously wasn't the answer either. He was the expert when it came to ways to avoid dealing with issues, but suicide wasn't the best answer for him. It was tempting, but it wouldn't be the best thing to do.

What WOULD be the best thing to do, though, was a question whose answer eluded him. Truth be told, if he hadn't been arrested, he'd still be trying to numb himself out with Vicodin and alcohol, but circumstances currently prevented that. So he had to find another way. Contrary to detoxing voluntarily on the outside, like he did in Mayfield, in here he wasn't detoxing willingly. He simply had no other choice. If he'd had a chance he'd pop more Vicodin and chase it with a lot more liquor in a heartbeat.

Before long, the nurse and a guard arrived with his Methadone and Valium. The Ondansetron stayed down and the nausea was at least somewhat alleviated for the time being. She watched while he slowly made his way to the door. The guard unlocked and opened his food port, and passed him his medications. He took the other medications uneventfully.

As he flopped back down in his bunk, House reflected on something. Until he found some other way to cope with things, the best he was going to feel would be when the Methadone and Valium kicked in. Nolan certainly didn't have the answer. For a short while he thought maybe Cuddy might be the answer, but then that blew up too. Vicodin and alcohol obviously weren't the answer but they were his fallback choices.

The Methadone kicked in first. _God, what a wonderful sensation!_ He wasn't high. Methadone is a narcotic but not as strong as hydrocodone or heroin. "Heroin without the high," he'd once called it. No, he wasn't high, but it did tame the five alarm fire in his leg down to a minor one alarmer.

The high came when that second dose of Valium kicked in. House was an alcoholic; he'd just never admitted it. He had no problem admitting to the Vicodin addiction since he could point to the fact that he did have a real need for prescribed pain relief. House's alcohol abuse was really just the same thing; a means of filling his need for psychological pain relief. The anti-depressant that Nolan prescribed was a safer and more effective way of accomplishing the same thing, but House stopped taking his SSRIs when he fell out with Nolan.

So in addition to detoxing from Vicodin, House was also at high risk of going through DT's from alcohol withdrawal. That required preventative treatment. Valium or Librium can be used to prevent or treat DT's. Librium is a standard part of every drug treatment facility's pharmacy, but maybe they didn't have it in this jail. Maybe Valium was all they had.

In any case, the Valium was causing a very uncomfortable high. Either he didn't need the Valium at all or else two doses in six hours was too much. House didn't need to be this sedated. He knew he was becoming too sedated, and all he could do was try to get the guard's attention before he became too sedated to stay awake. His eyes were closing against his will. His muscles were starting to feel like they were full of jell-o, like they were just blobs of tissue that wouldn't behave.

He called for a guard – over and over. The jail was sorely understaffed. The prisoner-to-guard ratio was probably about 100 to 1. Eventually a guard heard him and came over to investigate.

"Something's wrong," House slurred. "Sick."

"You gonna throw up?"

"No. Something wrong…Infirmary…."

"Did you overdose on something?" the guard said, alarmed at the way House would not open his eyes. The guard thought he must have overdosed on something. He'd learned long ago not to believe anything inmates said. Regardless of whether or not House was telling the truth, it was clear he needed medical quickly.

"Nooo – " House slurred softly.

"Ok, I got medical coming over now," the guard said right before he sounded the alert over his radio summoning medical help.

The nurse and another guard came over quickly. Everyone was immediately in agreement that he needed emergency care but the sad fact was the infirmary was not equipped to treat some overdoses. The immediate suspicion was that House must have overdosed on something even though he'd insisted he had not.

They debated calling 911 to have him treated in the local hospital's emergency room. "Not an overdose," House tried to insist. "Valium – you gave me – no more Valium. Let it wear off. Librium instead." He felt like he could barely get the words out. With his eyes closed he wasn't even sure if anyone understood him.

"Let's get him to the infirmary. He's awake and breathing which is good. He might be right. If we have to call 911 we can do it from there," the nurse said.

Someone brought a stretcher. Although he was so sedated he couldn't reliably bat an eyelash, jail policy still required handcuffing and shackling any inmate being transferred to another section of the jail, and so he was cuffed and shackled to the stretcher.

His stretcher was pushed by guards, but the nurse walked alongside talking to him the whole way to assess his level of consciousness.

"Are you withdrawing from alcohol too?"

"Nnnnoooo"

The nurse suspected the real answer was quite the opposite.

"How much do you drink on a daily basis?"

"Dunno"

"You don't know how much you drink?" the nurse asked. She knew she wasn't going to get any kind of meaningful answer right now. She wanted to keep up the conversation so she could assess his level of consciousness.

In the infirmary, House was efficiently transferred to a bed and assessed by the prison doctor. He was conscious but so sedated he couldn't reliably answer questions. As long as he could be awakened and was breathing Ok, it was deemed safe to let him sleep off the excess sedation in the infirmary. If it got to the point where they couldn't wake him up, more intensive treatment would be necessary and he'd have to be transferred to the hospital.

The prison doctor admitted that House might be right about using Librium instead of Valium.

LATER

After sleeping for almost ten hours, House woke up in a solitary cell in the infirmary in the full throes of detox. What woke him up was the fact that he was soaking wet with perspiration and he had to vomit and pee. When he tried to get up to use the toilet, his cane was gone. They'd probably inadvertently left it back in his old cell. Since he was actively detoxing, he was shaky anyway, and without his cane he had no chance of making it to the toilet. He stood up and his leg immediately buckled out from underneath him, refusing to support any weight.

Lying in a messy heap on the floor, he screamed for help. _Lord, this is Mayfield all over again_. The medical staff and a guard responded quickly. They found him doubled over on the floor in a wet mess, grabbing his leg, screaming and futilely trying to rub the pain away. He never even felt the needles hit home.

Within 30 minutes House was out. He was oblivious to the fact that they changed his clothes, changed his leg dressing, put him back in a clean bed and cleaned up the mess. That was the first time the prison doctor had had a good look at his leg. "Jeez," said the doctor to the nurse. "That hurts just looking at it. Let's put new steri-strips on and re-bandage it. He just had two surgeries on it, right? That makes a total of three surgeries there? Wow. Make sure and check the pulses in his leg too, while he's in the infirmary. Let's not shackle that leg anymore unless he acts out. I hope he cooperates. I'd hate to see that leg have to be shackled down again."


	6. Chapter 6

The next time House woke up, he was still exhausted, somewhat nauseated and his leg was bothering him a little. Though his face felt like a bowling ball, he felt a little better.

He was no longer in a solitary cell. He was still in the infirmary, but he'd been moved to a ward with three other inmates. The first time he saw the other three guys, he automatically went to red alert, unwilling to trust any of them and afraid of the next beat down. However, after studying his new roommates a little while longer, he realized they all appeared to be too old and sick to be of any threat to him. He would still need to be on guard but he could relax a bit around these guys.

He studied his environment. Someone had changed his leg dressing. Someone had changed his clothes too. He remembered trying to get up because he had to use the toilet, and he remembered being on the floor in pain, but he didn't remember anything after that. He must have made a mess and someone must have cleaned him up. Eww.

He couldn't see the clock on the wall and had no idea what time it was, but sunlight flooded the room through several small slit-like windows in the cinderblock wall. The windows were too far away for him to see out of them, but it was still nice to see natural sunlight. There was a band-aid on his left hand. He figured he must have had an IV recently. There was also a band-aid on the inside of his left elbow, the kind a lab technician usually applies after drawing blood. He didn't remember anyone drawing blood. They must have drawn a tox screen. Jails don't have laboratories so the blood sample would have had to be sent out somewhere else to be processed. House wondered why anyone would draw a tox screen when they knew it would be positive at least for Valium and Methadone. He figured they probably didn't believe him when he said he hadn't taken anything besides what they gave him.

Oh, well. He didn't trust anyone else, even on the outside, so why should anyone in here trust him?

One guard was stationed in his room. House figured the other three guys must be real gomers if one guard could handle four men in the open who were not restrained. The guard looked bored. House was the only inmate awake, and when he moved a little in his bed, he caught the attention of the guard. The guard suddenly went on alert, as if House's movement in bed were some sort of reason to be alarmed.

House saw the guard. "Relax, I'm just sitting up. I'm not going anywhere. I CAN'T go anywhere." The guard nodded and relaxed a bit.

He wanted to look at his chart. Unlike in the hospital, where patient charts were usually located at the foot of the patient's bed, charts in the jail infirmary were kept secure where other inmates couldn't get at them. Charts could be used as weapons. House had no idea where his chart was and was sure they would tell him it was against regulations for him to look at his chart anyway. He remembered something Thirteen had said about recordkeeping in the infirmary where she and Darien were incarcerated.

His ward had a TV mounted high on the wall. One TV for four patients. Well, he was lucky he had a TV at all. There wasn't one in his cell. The other three guys were too out of it to watch TV, so House was the only one able to watch it. He was still too sick in withdrawal to care about the TV, so it just blended in with all the other background noise.

Some kind of food arrived shortly. It looked like lunch, so House guessed it must be about noon. His tray contained potato chips, something green and red that could be mistaken for cole slaw, an apple, and something resembling ground dog food on a bun. A carton of milk was also served. House drank the milk, ate the chips and left everything else. He still wasn't too sure about his stomach, but either the Ondansetron was working or he was over the roughest part of his detox. He wasn't as nauseated as he had been yesterday.

The doctor and a nurse he hadn't met yet came in to the ward. The ward was really just an over-sized jail cell with room for four inmates instead of the usual two. The door was still locked and the inmates inside still had the same restrictions on their mobility that inmates in the rest of the jail had. They could move freely within the ward cell as long as there was a guard in there with them and as long as they were cooperative. Unruly inmates were put in solitary cells within the infirmary and cuffed or shackled to their beds if need be. When the doctor or nurse entered the ward, the guard accompanied them at each inmate's bedside just as if they were visiting inmates in the rest of the jail. Medications were still not allowed to be kept at the inmate's bedside or in the ward. The nurse still had to watch each inmate take his medications.

The doctor had a kind look but also, at the same time, it was apparent from his body language that he wouldn't take any shit from anyone. _Kutner would have liked him,_ House thought. The nurse was nice but she appeared naïve and a little nervous. The thought ran through House's mind that she must be new. _That must be dangerous in jail._ _It can't be good to show nervousness in here._

"Glad to see you're feeling better. We drew a tox screen after they put you back in bed. Do you remember falling?" the doctor asked.

"Yeah."

"The tox screen just showed Methadone and Valium."

"I could have told you that. I guess I don't have any right to ask why you drew one."

"You were a lot more sedated than one would normally expect after two small doses of Valium."

"I drink and I've been on Vicodin for over fifteen years. My liver is probably not functioning at 100%."

The doctor pulled a stool over to House's bedside and sat down. He spoke quietly.

"How much do you drink?"

House tried the bullshit route first. "Enough to get drunk. Regularly."

The doctor took a deep breath and continued, unfazed by the BS.

"Obviously. How much do you drink? I'm going to keep asking that question until I get a better answer."

House considered continuing that line of bullshit, but his heart wasn't in it. It might have been fun if he was feeling better, but in his current state of mind, it wasn't worth egging this guy on any more.

"At least a fifth of bourbon or scotch a day."

"Ok. We have you on a tapering dose of Librium now, along with the Methadone. Librium is much better than Valium for treating DTs in alcoholics. I don't see any need to continue the Ondansetron. I think you're almost through the worst of the withdrawal. You'll stay on the Methadone after you leave the infirmary. The nurse will bring the Methadone to your cell and watch you take it. I want to keep you here in the infirmary one more day; mostly because I want to keep an eye on your incision. Some of the stitches are missing. We replaced the steri-strips where the stitches are missing, and that part of the incision isn't healing too well. I expect that fall didn't help matters any."

"That scar has been opened up three times now. It isn't going to heal quickly and when it does it won't be pretty. Thanks for the info," House fired back half-heartedly.

"You should also start AA. We have a pretty active Alcoholics Anonymous group here. A volunteer comes in and serves as a sponsor, but the group is pretty much run by inmates. Most inmates with substance abuse problems actually abuse multiple substances, so you're not alone."

House looked askance at the doctor. Nobody had ever called him an alcoholic before, or even insinuated that he was one. Even though objectively, he knew he fit the criteria for alcoholism, he'd never thought of himself as alcoholic. There's a big difference between objectively realizing you fit the criteria of an alcoholic, and subjectively realizing you ARE one.

And with that, the doctor visit was over. The doctor and nurse moved on to the next inmate patient.

House picked at the two band-aids on his arm and thought about his next move. He was going to have to call an attorney today; preferably as early as possible. His bail hearing had to be coming up soon. House had no idea who to call. The hospital attorneys would only defend in hospital matters. Wilson's attorney was a divorce lawyer. Was there a lawyer referral hotline?

There was an inmate phone in House's ward. Someone had given House a code to use to make phone calls with. The phones weren't working when House came in to the system, but one of the old geezers in another bed managed to get up and use the phone so the phones were working now. Inmates weren't allowed to have cell phones for security reasons and they weren't allowed access to money (also for security reasons). The jail had a state of the art inmate phone system. The inmate picked up the receiver, entered his phone code on the numeric keypad, waited for the dial tone, and then placed his call. Calls were all timed and were disconnected automatically after ten minutes. Calls could also be monitored remotely for security reasons.

House sat up slowly on the side of his bed and gingerly tested his right leg. It was sore, but then it was always sore. The leg seemed to hold some of his weight and even with the old aluminum cane that didn't quite fit him, he felt certain that he could make it to the phone. Hobbling like one of the three old geezers in here with him, he made it to the phone. Joy of joys, his phone code worked and the phone functioned normally. Naturally he called Wilson.

"I need your lawyer's phone number." No "hello," "god I miss you," or anything like that. Just straight to the point.

"And I miss you too. I'm glad you called. I'll give you his number, but he doesn't do criminal cases; just divorces. You sound good; I take it the worst of the detox is over with?"

"Give me the number. They cut the phones off after ten minutes. I know he doesn't do criminal but he'll know one who does."

"How's the detox?" Wilson asked.

"Just give me the number," House said, ignoring everything else Wilson said that didn't contain the lawyer's phone number.

"555-321-1111".

"Thanks," House said and then hung up. The old geezer who had used the phone earlier was back in line behind House to use the phone again. House wondered what the old guy had done to wind up in jail.

Although his leg was good for one trip to the phone, it wouldn't hold him for much longer than that. If he'd had two good legs, he'd have gone back to the end of the phone line and waited in line to make his second phone call behind the old guy currently using the phone. Standing in line, even for ten minutes, wouldn't be easy with one good leg, so he made his way back to his bed under the guard's close watch.

Judge Judy was blaring away on the wall-mounted TV in the ward, but House couldn't bring himself to watch it. Normally he followed Judge Judy like hummingbirds attracted to sugar water, but not today. About an hour later, House made his way to the phone again. Of the four men in the ward, only two were alert enough and able to get out of bed to use the phone. The other two were in comas. On the outside, if they were in his hospital, House would've been watching Judge Judy in their rooms. Not here, though. He pretty much ignored them here.

Under close scrutiny by the guard in the room, House made his second phone call to Wilson's lawyer. Of course the guy wasn't in his office. House's call was answered by a receptionist, but then put through to voice mail. House had no idea how the guy should call him back, since inmate phones appeared to just be for outgoing calls. If the phones accepted incoming calls, there would be a phone number printed on the phone somewhere. There was no number printed on the phone. House had never heard the phone ring, so he assumed it wasn't set up to accept incoming calls. Maybe the lawyer could call the prison switchboard and be routed through to House some way.

"Hey, I'm Gregory House. Your client James Wilson is my friend. I need a criminal defense lawyer. I know you only handle divorces but I thought you might know a good defense lawyer. I have to assume you know how to get in touch with me. I'm on an inmate phone and it only allows us to place outgoing calls. I'm at the Mercer County Jail. Please call me back soon."

A very short time later, House saw someone hand the guard a small note. The guard approached House's bed.

"Your lawyer called back. Here's the number he can be reached at. Inmate phones do not accept incoming calls."

"He's finding me a defense attorney. How does my defense attorney call me back here?"

"Inmate phones don't accept any incoming calls. You have to keep calling until you get a hold of your attorney. After that, your attorney should come here for face to face visits."

_No incoming calls._ _Oh, well, it's not like it's ever easy to use the phone in here anyway so might as well get used to it._

House got up and wobbled his way over to the phone again, and thankfully, the other guy wasn't already using it. No doubt the number on the note was a cell phone number. He called Wilson's attorney back.

Fully aware that inmate phone calls were monitored (there was even a sign on the phone stating that fact), House kept the conversation short and to the point.

"Hi. I need a good defense attorney. Wilson tells me you only handle divorces. Who's the best defense attorney you know?"

"Hi, House. Wilson has mentioned you many times. Are you calling on an inmate phone? The caller ID says the number is private."

"Yes."

"I would use Sam Bell." He gave House the phone number. "Wish I could help you more."

"Thanks, that's what I need. Bye."

House wondered why Wilson's divorce attorney would know anything about inmate phones. It's not like divorce attorneys would ever have to visit their clients in jail. Or wait, maybe they do. At least some of these sad screw ups in here must be in the process of getting a divorce. Maybe divorce attorneys spend plenty of time visiting their fucked up clients in jail.

Nobody was waiting in line behind him to use the phone, so House immediately placed another phone call – this one to Sam Bell. Mr. Bell's receptionist answered the phone and sent the phone call straight through to Mr. Bell. Fortunately Mr. Bell was in the office and picked up the phone.

House began to relay his story to Mr. Bell, including how he was referred to Mr. Bell. Sam let House finish his story, then said, "It's nice to meet you, Dr. House. We shouldn't continue this conversation on the phone since inmate phone calls are subject to being monitored. I am accepting new clients. I will meet you at the jail tomorrow and you and I can decide then if you want me to represent you. Once I take you on as a client, all conversations are privileged and confidential. I'll see you tomorrow, and I'll bring all the necessary paperwork to get you started if you allow me to represent you. Goodbye, Dr. House, and I look forward to meeting you in person."

One big, important conversation was out of the way. House had a defense lawyer.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N – thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed! Your reviews mean a lot to me and encourage me to keep going.**

**I'm looking to end this before the season premiere. **

The next day House was moved out of the infirmary and back to his regular cell. He was still going through withdrawal but the worst of it was over with. He would remain on the Librium for the near future. The prison doctor would continue to follow him with daily visits to his cell. The doctor had informed him that he could remain on the Methadone for as long as he needed narcotic pain relief. They were already tapering the Methadone doses down anyway, and when they got to the lowest possible dose that kept his pain under control, he would remain on that dose. The nurses would still come by his cell several times a day with his medications and watch while he took them.

When he was moved back to his regular cell, it was under a guard's escort just like usual. This time, since he was able to walk with the aid of the prison cane, they handcuffed his hands in front of him so he could still use the cane. Two guards were in attendance when he was cuffed in the infirmary, but only one guard escorted him back to his regular cell. On his way back from the infirmary, he had to walk the gauntlet of other inmates who did nothing but yell, scream and taunt him. Thank God they were all behind steel doors and not bars. All this screaming and taunting seemed to be routine behavior. They did this every time any inmate was escorted down the hall. House analyzed that it could be for entertainment or it could be for some kind of power play, to make new inmates realize just how low on the totem pole they really were.

Fortunately, House hadn't acquired a new roommate during the short time he was in the infirmary. The last thing he wanted was to come back to his regular cell and find a new cellie waiting for him. The guard had informed him that Big Fat Smelly Guy was in the hole.

Shortly after he was back in his old cell, the warden came by for just a short time. The warden introduced himself and that was pretty much about it. Jail lesson number 14 was that there are no niceties in jail. Being nice makes you weak. His guards weren't nice, the warden wasn't nice, and the inmates weren't nice. Nobody wants to be weak.

Jail lesson number 15, House learned quickly, was that being disabled and on Methadone makes you more of a target than you would be otherwise. Within a day or so, every inmate on the block learned the routine. Every time the nurse visited House's cell, the nurse brought drugs. The nurse always came with a guard so the nurse wasn't the other inmates' target. House was. House had an antisocial attitude, a cane, and a reliable source of medications. He had three things any inmate there would love to use against him, and House knew it.

Every time the nurse came to his cell with his Librium and Methadone, the screaming just increased when the nurse left.

"Hey bitch! I'm a come get me some!"

"I got a use for that cane, yes sir!"

"You like to screw with people? Come screw with me!"

House just curled up on his bunk with his eyes screwed shut and his hands over his ears.

Jail lesson number 16: Figure out how to prove yourself in jail. The alternatives, risk getting killed or being everyone else's bitch, were unthinkable.

House had what was ordinarily an excellent weapon; his wickedly acerbic wit. In here, though, these people were so stupid that his wit would be wasted on them or, worse yet, turned against him. House had a lot of work to do, figuring out how to prove himself without getting himself killed in the process.

Dinner arrived, and just like before, the tray was shoved through his food port. The guard announced, "You're locked down tonight. You act ok and you'll eat in the mess hall tomorrow."

The mess on the tray was no more appetizing than anything else he'd been served, but he was hungry for the first time in days. He was hungry enough to close his eyes and eat the stuff.

Inmates in House's block had thirty minutes to eat. That's all. From the time their trays were served to the time trays were picked up, inmates had thirty minutes to shovel the food in. About thirty minutes later, guards came by to pick up the trays. During his first meal out of the infirmary, House saw one inmate forcibly extracted from his cell for failure to return his tray when the guards came by to collect it. House learned that you either consumed everything on the tray within the thirty allotted minutes or you forfeited anything that was not consumed.

Another inmate, presumably in the cell to his left, said in a normal tone of voice, "Hey, you don't have to eat that shit. They got a commissary here. You can earn points for the commissary doing jobs. Spend your points at the commissary. I'll show ya when they let you out tomorrow."

_Someone actually wants to talk to me?_ House's guard went up higher. He still had no idea who he could trust, or if he could trust anyone.

After "dinner" was over with and the trays were collected. House had nothing else to do but think. He was still on lockdown. He had no idea why, but he guessed it was because he was new and didn't know the routine yet. He knew he was at a disadvantage in terms of the power play with the other inmates, and in order to prove himself, he had to come up with a weapon other than his wit.

Pills? Maybe. Pills make an inmate a target, true, but they could also give power. Problem was, the only medication he was getting that was in pill form was Librium. Methadone is liquid. He could start cheeking the Librium, but he still needed it for a short while, and anyway, they'd stop giving it to him in a week or so. Even if he could get by with cheeking it, the supply would stop within a week.

The only other weapon he had at his disposal was his brain. Not _wit_. _Brain power. Intellect._ He could figure out some way to use his intellect to his advantage, to lord it over all the crazy nut jobs in here. He briefly considered some sort of blackmail against the warden, like he tried to do to Nolan in Mayfield. The problem with blackmailing the warden was that the warden could add time on for bad behavior.

Plan A was to game the attorney out; figure out what angle the attorney was going to take in House's defense and hope that they wouldn't just wind up butting heads.

Plan B was to game out the other inmates.

The nurse and a guard came by with his evening Methadone and Librium. House dutifully swallowed both, stuck his tongue out and pulled his cheeks apart to prove he hadn't cheeked the Librium. For a brief moment he thought about sarcastically asking them if they wanted to check any other cavities, but then these people would actually do it.

He went to sleep early. Tomorrow would be a busy day.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N – thanks, as always, for all the helpful reviews! Finally we get to meet the attorney in this chapter and we'll have plenty of Wilson in the next chapter.**

Early in the morning, before wake-up time, House was wide awake putting together his plans for the day.

A guard came by to do the morning count. House saw a guard come by several times during the night and shine a light in his cell. He assumed they had to count prisoners at regular intervals and that was the purpose for shining a flashlight on him every few hours.

"Can I get a pencil and paper? I guess it's too much to ask for a pen."

"Inmates don't get pens. You can get a pencil and paper from the commissary when it opens."

"But I don't have any points yet to spend at the commissary. My attorney is coming today and I need to write stuff down."

"Pencil and paper are free. You have to get them from the commissary," the guard answered as he moved on to the next cell.

Half an hour later, the loud PA wake up call was blasted all over House's cell block, followed shortly by a guard who made sure all the inmates were in the process of getting up for the day. "Shower time," the guard announced when he got to House's cell.

"Seriously? It's 5:45 am!" House cried.

"It's now or never. Your choice."

"Showering at 5:45 in the goddamn morning!" House grumbled loudly as he got up, grabbed the cane, a towel, a wash rag and some soap. He stunk worse than ever and knew he needed a shower, yet he wasn't above letting his feelings be known to all, near and far. "It's fucking 5:45 in the morning!" he grumbled loudly again, while looking at the floor so as not to be perceived as threatening anyone. He was just complaining, and everyone's entitled to do that.

"Shut the fuck up!" came the chorus of cat calls in response. "Goddamn sissy!" "We don't wanna hear your mouth!"

"And I don't wanna hear yours either," House shouted back in the general direction of every inmate in his cellblock.

"Be quiet and let's go," said the guard. "You know the drill. Stick your hands out and cuff up. Now. Get your clean clothes and your shower stuff. " House was issued two pair of underwear, two pair of socks, two sets of prison clothes, a pair of shower shoes and a pair of tennis shoes.

As House passed the friendly inmate in the next cell, the one who had told him about the commissary, the other inmate said calmly, "They scream at everyone. I'm Bob."

"And I'm stinky and hungry. We'll talk later," House replied.

House and the guard arrived at the shower. The guard informed him of shower policy. "You get fifteen minutes. The water cuts off after fifteen minutes. Shower shoes are required. No shower shoes, no shower." The guard uncuffed him. House looked around, hopeful that he would find private shower stalls and not at all surprised to find none. There were rows of shower nozzles on the wall and no privacy anywhere. One spot at the end had grab rails mounted on the wall. House moved slowly, to avoid slipping, down to the handicapped spot. Oh well, might as well get down to business. Wait, was the guard really going to stay in here with him?

"Do you have to stay?"

"First shower is supervised. You're not on lockdown anymore so after this we won't need to supervise and you won't necessarily be handcuffed either. Long as you don't act up. You act up, you get locked down. Fifteen minutes." The guard sat back and watched. Inmates can do bad things in showers, including attack other inmates, so it was to House's advantage that a guard stayed with him even though he clearly didn't see it that way. "You don't have to have a front row seat," House complained. "And I have a right to ask for something plastic to cover up my dressing so it doesn't get wet." The guard radioed for someone to bring them a plastic bag and tape. "If I'm not on lockdown, you can leave me for a few minutes to get the plastic," House said, daring to look the guy square in the eye.

Wordlessly, the guard waited while another guard came in with a plastic bag and some tape.

As he was escorted back to his cell, clean and uncuffed, House glared angrily at the jeering inmates. That stopped the jeering, at least for the time being.

"Chow in thirty minutes," the guard announced after House was back in his cell. "When the doors open, exit quietly. Walk single file to the chow hall. Inmates get thirty minutes for chow."

House had things on his mind. His attorney, Sam Bell, was due for a visit today. House needed to write things down but the commissary wasn't open yet so he couldn't get a pencil and paper. He also desperately wanted, hoped, longed to see Wilson. It was also time to start figuring out the game on the other inmates. Some of that he could begin to do in the chow hall.

Bob started the conversation from the other side of the wall. The two men couldn't see each other but they could hear each other well.

"What're you in for?"

"Smashing my ex-girlfriend's house up. You?"

"Manufacturing meth. I got caught in a meth sting. What'd you do, punch a hole in the wall? You don't sound crazy enough to do much more than that."

"Drove my car through the front of her house. Tore the whole damn wall down. Didn't hurt anybody, but here I am. Bitch filed charges."

Bob replied pensively, "Yeah, they'll do that. This your first day here?"

"Nothing personal, but I'm not really the gabby type." House still had no idea whether or not he could trust this guy or, for that matter, anyone else in his cellblock.

"First thing you gotta learn is stick with your people. Whites hang with whites, Blacks hang with Blacks, Asians hang with Asians, Hispanics hang with Hispanics. Don't mess with anyone else. Don't look at people in their eyes. Don't even talk to 'em for now. Don't cross paths with the other guys. Stay out of their way. Most of these guys are bat-shit crazy. Don't trust any of 'em. In the chow hall, on the yard, and everywhere, stay with your own people. Second thing is, commissary opens after breakfast. You gotta get in line for commissary early because the line gets long. A lot of stuff is free but some of the stuff you have to buy with points. When you get a job here, they pay you in two ways. You get points to spend at the commissary and you get money socked away in a fund. At the commissary they give you a form and you check off all the stuff you want."

Expecting a thank you, the only thing Bob heard from House's general direction was "Yeah."

"Ok, well, see ya later," Bob replied.

In the chow hall for breakfast, House nervously looked around him. He did his best to look confident and in charge, but secretly, he was scared to death. The room was segregated. The inmates did this of their own accord. Blacks sat with blacks, whites sat with whites, Asians sat with Asians, and Hispanics sat with Hispanics. Inmates made eye contact with members of their own race, but tried to avoid eye contact with members of other races. They didn't even cross paths. To get to wherever they wanted to go, inmates would walk the long way around rather than cut across the path of someone of another race. Contrary to the cellblock, where the noise was intolerable, the chow hall was generally fairly quiet. The unwritten rule appeared to be, stick with your own kind and shut up if you want to get out of the chow hall alive. There was some murmuring and a few pockets of loud chatter but overall, it was a lot quieter in here than it was on the cellblock when everyone was locked down at night.

House found an empty table. He had no desire to eat with or talk to anyone. A few other white guys came over to join him, and House got up to leave. There were no other empty tables and it was difficult for him to walk very far with the cane in one hand and a full tray in the other, so he found another seat at the same table but as far away from the other guys as possible. Eventually the table filled and House got up again. He REALLY didn't want company.

A guard came over to investigate. Inmates who get up before their meals are finished are usually up to no good. House appeared a little agitated and it doesn't take much agitation from one inmate to cause a riot in a public area like a chow hall.

"I'm not sitting with these guys," House said to the guard.

"Then go back to your cell. That's your choice."

"Fine. I'm not sitting with these idiots."

Before the guard could react, the fight ensued. "Idiot? Who's the idiot now, House?" someone screamed. But it wasn't Whites against Blacks, or Blacks against Asians, or Asians against Hispanics. It was everyone at House's table against House. When the fight broke out, all the other inmates at the other tables knew enough to immediately drop to the floor on their stomachs.

The only other inmate at another table who didn't drop to the floor was Bob. Bob ran over and grabbed House before he could start swinging the cane. A guard fired tear gas into the small mob and the fight stopped before it really got started. Trays had been overturned and food was strewn all over the floor, but since the melee stopped so early, nobody was injured. The inmates who started the melee were taken back to solitary immediately, and House was escorted back to his cell.

He wasn't on lockdown, so the door to his cell was closed but not locked. He didn't even last thirty minutes in the chow hall. Bob came back, opened House's door, and found House sitting on the side of his bunk, with his head in his left hand and his right hand pounding on the bed, fuming.

"You ever heard of knocking first?" House said, loudly and with much more force than he intended.

"Sorry. That's what I mean by minding your own business though. You gotta learn who you can trust and who you can't. Don't mess with those dudes. They didn't sit at your table because they like you. They're gaming you out. You prob'ly doing the same thing. You lucky they didn't kill you," Bob said as he hurriedly closed House's cell door.

About an hour later, someone came by House's cell passing out books from the library. The jail had a small library. The books were tattered, torn and old, but still, anything was better than just sitting there doing nothing. House jumped at the chance to pick out some books. They were all old paperbacks. Inmates weren't allowed to have hardcover books. House picked out a good early Steve Martini mystery. The person passing out the books was an inmate employed in the library.

"They let inmates work in the library?" House asked the other man. "Yeah. They always got inmate jobs in the library, the chow hall, and the infirmary. Sometimes they got inmate jobs on the housekeeping crew too. You gotta have good behavior. You gotta put in a request for a job with your case worker," the other man answered. Bob chimed in too. "I had a job in the chow hall but I caught a case when some guy called me a kike. I knocked him into next week with a cooking pot. I put him in the infirmary. I wound up in the hole for a month and I lost my job. Nobody messes with me anymore, though."

"Thanks for saving my life and all, but I didn't ask for your input," House called out, again with more force than he intended, to Bob.

"I'll shut up. But you need to learn who you can talk to."

The inmate passing out the books said, "Hey, I gotta go now, but he's right. You need to learn who you can talk to. A lot of these guys are bat-shit crazy. If you find someone that ain't completely nuts, learn how to get along with 'em. 'Cause next time you call a whole table fulla guys 'idiots', they gonna kill you with that cane."

Alone in his cell again with the door closed, House started reading the novel and then remembered he had a meeting to prepare for. Not being on lockdown, he was free to make his way to the commissary. He found out immediately that if he thought there was a lot of red tape in hospital administration on the outside, the amount of red tape necessary to get anything done in jail wasn't any better. He made his way to the commissary window but before he could even open his mouth to ask for a pencil and paper, the guard inside shoved a paper and pencil out to House. The commissary was locked. When an inmate approached the commissary, the guard opened a slot in the door through which the inmate passed his filled-out commissary checklist. The guard would then fill the inmate's order, open another part of the door and hand the inmate the requested items. House had to fill out the checklist before his order could be filled. There were a lot of food items that were mostly junk food, such as candy. Ramen noodles and other instant dried soups were also on the list. House could also order individual soft drinks, and a pencil and paper. Certain other items were available to be ordered, such as envelopes and stamps, but they cost points that House hadn't accrued yet because he didn't yet have a job and hadn't earned any points. He hoped he could order smokes from the commissary, but they weren't on the list. _Must be a non-smoking facility,_ House thought, even though he could plainly smell cigarette smoke drifting in the hall from someone else's cell. _They must be sneaking smokes in. Gotta figure out how to do that,_ he thought.

He was able to obtain a pencil, paper, some candy and soft drinks. Wow. Big shopping trip. And only one commissary visit per week was allowed.

Back in his cell, again with the door closed, House began writing.

Explain the charges

When is bail hearing and can I post bail now

How many cases have you won

How many cases have you lost

How many cases do you have now

How much do you charge

He no sooner got done with the list when a guard approached his cell with the announcement that he had a visitor.

_Wilson?_

The guard escorted him to the visitation room. The jail had two different visitation areas. One was a public visitation room, like a cafeteria. Since it was public and there was nothing between the inmate and the visitors, inmates in the public visitation area had to demonstrate good behavior. If they had any write-ups they were not allowed in the public visitation area. Their visits were conducted in the secure visiting area, where there was plexi-glass between the visitor and the inmate and a guard watching the inmate.

House wasn't on lockdown and hadn't had any write ups yet, but the visitor was his attorney so the visit had to take place in a secure area. They had a room set up specifically for attorney/client visits, where the inmate could meet face to face with the attorney and not have to have a plexi-glass wall between them. It was private but a guard had to remain with the inmate. House was escorted to that room and Mr. Sam Bell was waiting for him.

Mr. Bell was a tiny waif of a man. There was nothing threatening about him but there was also nothing very commanding about his stature, either. House would have preferred someone a little more authoritative looking, even if she was female. Mr. Bell looked like he would be bowled over by a dust mite.

Then Mr. Bell opened his mouth. In a voice that sounded like it came from a 7 foot tall 400 pound linebacker for the New York Giants, Mr. Bell confidently announced, "Good day, Mr. House. Sorry, Dr. House. My name is Samuel Bell. Everyone calls me Sam. It's nice to meet you." House wished he could close his eyes and just imagine that the man really was big, tall and beefy. The man's big voice simply did not match his meek stature. Mr. Bell reached forward to initiate a handshake, but when House also reached forward to complete the handshake, the guard stepped in. "Uh-uh. Not allowed. No contact. Put your hands on the table where I can see them."

Both men sat down at the table, opposing one another. House slapped his hands on the table, palms down, in an irritated fashion.

"Dr. House. I've read the charges. Can I tell you a little about me first?"

"Sure." House felt that one word clipped responses would be best until he got to know this guy.

"Good. I've been a criminal defense lawyer all of my working life. I've been practicing law since 1981. I was in a group practice for about fifteen years but I've been in solo private practice since 1996. What questions do you have of me before we get started?"

Confident, assertive, direct and to the point. If the guy was 7 feet tall and 400 pounds, he'd be just the guy House wanted on his case.

House asked the guard if it was ok to reach into his pockets to get the paper. With the guard's assent, House pulled out the questions he had written down.

"What was I charged with?"

"You mean they didn't tell you when you were arrested?" Mr. Bell replied, with his eyebrows arched, very surprised.

"Yes they did. I want to know if you know what I was charged with."

"Oh. This time, you were charged with aggravated assault with intent to commit serious bodily harm," Mr. Bell replied.

"What do you mean, 'this time'?" House replied.

"I've read not only your current case, but your previous case file too. You were arrested several years ago by Detective Michael Tritter on an illegal possession of narcotics with intent to distribute."

"That case was dismissed. It has nothing to do with my current situation."

"I know, but the prosecuting attorney's office also has that information and they may try to use it against you. I need to know everything about you if I'm going to defend you."

"Well, at least you're prepared," House replied simply.

"Anything else you want to know about me?" Mr. Bell stated.

"Seeing as you know a lot more about me than I do about you, yes, there is. What's your win/lose percentage?"

"I win about 75% of my cases. I don't accept just any criminal case. I only accept cases I think are winnable. You need to know that up front."

"What do you mean by 'winnable'?"

"I mean, obviously I can't prove you didn't wreck your ex-girlfriend's house" and before Mr. Bell could continue, House cut in.

"I hate that word."

"Dr. House, please don't interrupt. I can't prove that you didn't wreck your ex-girlfriend's house. That's not the issue anyway. 'Winnable' cases include those that can be thrown out for any reason, pled down to something less serious, or something along those lines."

"I'll interrupt when I damn well want to. I hate the word 'obvious'. If I were to agree to let you defend me, what would you try to achieve for me?" House fired back, truly angry now. He had to be very careful not to move his hands and to try to control his anger in front of the guard. House had a penchant for exploding at all the wrong times. Unfortunately he never realized it was the wrong time until the explosion had already happened – thus the reason for his current predicament. For the first time in a long time he recognized this would be the wrong time to explode, with his freedom on the line.

House wasn't really angry at Mr. Bell. He was angry at the situation, at what his action had gotten him into. He was now in a world in which he had very little, if any control over what happened to him. If he didn't retain Mr. Bell, or if Mr. Bell decided not to represent him, he was sure it would be difficult to find anyone else good who would agree to represent him. House was widely respected among fellow doctors for his diagnostic abilities and widely disliked by those same physicians for his lack of interpersonal skills. Since doctors and lawyers frequently move in the same social circles, House was sure there were just as many attorneys who felt the same way about him. House had certainly come before enough judges and pissed enough judges off that even if he could find a good attorney who would defend him, chances were likely that he'd wind up in front of some judge that he shared a history with. Schmoozing comes in handy, and if there was one thing House was not, it was a schmoozer.

"Sorry about that. I'll try not to interrupt you again," House apologized softly, almost under his breath. _Try not to bite the hand off the only defense attorney who might actually defend me,_ House reminded himself silently.

"That's ok. First off, you'll have to agree to retain me before I can proceed with anything else. If you agree to retain me, we'll go through your files – all of them – together. To answer your question, my initial reaction would be that we should plead down to something less serious. We may be able to claim that there were mitigating circumstances and try to prove you did not have intent to cause serious bodily harm. Of course I would need to review everything in much more detail before coming to any conclusion, but you asked what I would try to achieve for you."

"You wanted me to know something about you up front. You should know something about me up front. I never trust anyone. If you'll agree to represent me, I'll agree to hire you."

"Here are my fees, then. I'm not cheap. My fees are due and payable at certain times throughout the duration of your case, and any balance is due and payable at the conclusion of your case." Mr. Bell reached into his briefcase and pulled out a fee schedule and handed it to House.

"I can afford you. Where do I sign?" House asked.

Mr. Bell pulled out a retainer agreement and showed House where to sign.

Mr. Bell turned to the guard. "Guard, you're aware that everything I've said and everything my client has said is confidential and is not to leave this room."

"I'm aware. I'm required to be here and I'm aware of the attorney/client privilege."

"Dr. House, it was nice to meet you. I'll review everything and meet with you in a few days." Both men rose to go their separate ways, but then House remembered another question he needed to ask.

"Why didn't they tell me my bail when I was arrested, so I could post bail then?"

Both men sat down again.

"Bail needs to be set during a bail hearing. If you were arrested for something like unpaid parking tickets, there would have been a fine from those unpaid parking tickets, and that is usually referred to as bond. That would be the cost of the tickets plus court cost; that kind of thing. They would have told you what your bond was during the intake process, and if you had the cash on you, you could have posted bond then. Bail is different. Bail is set by a judge and depends, in part, on what you're accused of. Bail hearings are usually held the same day or the day after the arrest, so I would expect your bail hearing should be today. I'm glad you asked about that. I'll find out about that right now. If your bail hearing is today, I have court all day today so I won't be able to be there with you. If it's today, I can get a continuance or you can go without me. I don't necessarily need to be there for a bail hearing, but if you want me to be there and they have it today, I'll get a continuance."

"I don't want a continuance. I want to bail out today."

"Then let me find out for you right now." Mr. Bell whipped out his iPhone and called the circuit clerk's office. He asked the clerk to check the docket for today and tomorrow. House's bail hearing was scheduled for later today.

"Good news. You're on for today. It's just a bail hearing. When you go, they'll ask you for your attorney of record. Give them my name. Call me whether or not you're able to post bail. I ask my clients to call my office. If I'm not in the office, client calls are automatically forwarded to my cell phone. Good day, Dr. House. I hope it works out for you."

"What time is my hearing?" House asked.

"They don't assign times. They go in order of docket number. You are docket number sixty five out of one hundred cases on the docket today, and they're not all simple hearings. There is a chance that the court may have to continue your hearing until tomorrow if they get too far behind on the cases before yours."

_I might actually be able to bail out today!_ House hoped against hope. "See ya," House replied as both men stood up again to leave. There was a sign in the small meeting area stating that attorneys should remain seated until their clients were escorted out of the room. Once their clients were safely escorted out of the meeting room, the attorney was allowed to leave.

House was escorted back to his cell. Thankfully, the upper bunk still wasn't occupied. House still had the cell to himself. House didn't think that would last long.

Court started at 9 am. That didn't mean House's case would be heard at 9 am. It just meant that's when they started with case number 1 on the docket. It could be noon, 4 pm or the next day by the time they got around to his bail hearing. This would make for an extremely long day for the defendants because they all had to be there by 9 am. If a defendant didn't show up then things could progress faster. If a particular hearing on the docket went longer than expected, the day for everyone would get longer.

House had no idea what to expect when the guard came back to his cell to escort him to the court bus. The bus was crammed full of inmates with court appointments that day. All inmates were handcuffed and shackled prior to getting on the bus. Both of his hands were handcuffed. A chain was fastened around his waist just like all the other inmates on the bus, to be used in the process of shackling legs. He was under a physician's order not to have his right leg shackled, but the final decision as to whether or not that would be necessary was always up to the guard escorting him. They applied a shackle to his left leg and loosely attached it to the chain around his waist. He had no way to grip his cane, so he was subjected to the lovely indignity of having two guards help him hop up the steps to the bus. Of course the bus was an old school bus. It looked to be about thirty years old and therefore was not equipped with a lift for the disabled.

The ride to the courthouse was loud, hot and bumpy. The noise on the bus equaled the noise on his cellblock. It was deafening. The bus was hot because, for security reasons, all the windows were shut. Thirty year old busses generally aren't air conditioned and this was no exception. A fan blew in the front, but it was inadequate to keep cool air circulating throughout the entire bus. House guessed that the department of corrections couldn't afford to keep decent shock absorbers on their busses. This bus felt like it had no shock absorbers at all. He, or more specifically his right leg, felt every single bump, every single pothole, every single rock and rut in the road.

After what seemed an interminable length of time, but in reality was only about ten minutes, they arrived at the courthouse. Inmates were not discharged from the bus in front of the courthouse. Department of Corrections busses were driven into a secure underground garage. After the garage door closed, guards from the courthouse came out to meet the bus. Only after the garage doors were shut and guards were in place were the inmates allowed out of the bus. They remained in handcuffs and shackles. They were instructed to proceed single file, escorted by guards, into a secure area in the basement of the courthouse. They would be held in holding cells there until their cases were heard. When it was the inmate's turn for his case to be heard, he was escorted in handcuffs and shackles by a guard to the appropriate courtroom. He remained in handcuffs and shackles while his case was heard.

The courthouse was built long before it was required by law to be made handicapped accessible. The courthouse was three stories high. The holding cells were in the basement and the courtrooms were on the top two floors. There was one cramped elevator for the entire building. Therefore, the wait for the elevator could be a bit lengthy.

House waited, waited, and waited longer in what all the other inmates referred to as the "tank" (any holding cell). The courthouse only had a couple of tanks and one was for women. The male inmates were housed in groups in the other two tanks, like angry, vicious piranhas trapped inside a fish net. Everyone had to remain handcuffed and shackled. They were jammed into two small tanks and the tension was so high that pandemonium would have broken out had they not been restrained. There were roughly fifty inmates packed into two holding cells and only two guards to watch them. Restraints were necessary.

House managed to maintain his cool. There was no way to avoid sitting next to any other inmates since they were packed in there shoulder-to-shoulder, so the only thing he could do was stare at the floor and completely avoid eye or verbal contact with anyone.

Pretty soon someone official-looking came down and started calling out names, five at a time. Groups of five inmates were shackled together and escorted up to the courtroom for their proceedings. Several hours later, his name was called with a group of four other inmates. Even though everyone was handcuffed and shackled, House still couldn't possibly keep up with the other four men, especially without his cane, if all five men were shackled together like the previous groups had been. They chained four of the men together and House was escorted separately. The fact that the prison could only send two guards for fifty men meant that sheriff's deputies from elsewhere in the building had to be called down to assist with escorts up to the courtroom. Along with the fifty inmates, there were fifty other non-criminal cases being heard that day. The non-criminal defendants weren't incarcerated so they were lined up in chairs outside the courtroom waiting for their turn. The handcuffed and shackled inmates had to pass by the other defendants on their way to the courtroom. That meant more public humiliation. Some of the inmates didn't seem to care, as though they'd been through this before. House maintained his stony, stoic exterior, but secretly, he was mortified. He maintained eye contact with the ground. _All of this shame and humiliation because of one stupid act, _he thought. _I should have just thrown the damn brush through the window and gone on to the bar with Wilson. _

Inside the courtroom, the judge began hearing the five inmates' cases. Fortunately all five of them were pre-trial type hearings on small matters such as bail and little technicalities, so the hearings were not lengthy. Three cases were heard ahead of House's. Their proceedings only lasted a few minutes each.

The bailiff announced, "State vs. Gregory House."

House rose to his feet, slowly and awkwardly hanging on to a wooden rail for balance.

"Are you represented by legal counsel?"

"Yes. His name is Samuel Bell. He is not able to be here today. I'm representing myself in his absence," House replied.

"Do you need a continuance?" the judge asked. House looked over sharply at the prosecuting attorney's table as someone over there seemed to suddenly become quite agitated at the mention of a continuance. Nobody wanted anything continued to a later date.

"No," House replied.

"The charge is Aggravated assault with intent to cause serious bodily harm. How do you plead?" the judge asked.

"Not guilty," House replied.

"Bail is set at twenty five thousand dollars. See the clerk to post bail. Next case."

_Post bail. Yeah. Like I have twenty five thousand dollars in cash in my pocket. How the hell am I supposed to post that kind of bail?_ fumed House.

They had to wait until all five inmates' cases had been heard before any of the inmates could move. The fifth man's hearing was a little more complicated. House missed his morning meds because of being in court, and the pain in his leg ramped up considerably the longer he had to sit there. The fresh, not-yet-healed incision was screaming for attention and House could do nothing about it; not to mention the fact that some of the Vicodin withdrawal symptoms were beginning to make a repeat appearance since he'd missed his morning Librium. House wanted desperately to get out of there, get back to jail and get his meds before things ramped up any more.

"I need my meds," he whispered to the guard glued to his side. "I need to go back now."

Seeing the beads of sweat beginning to form on House's forehead and the way he was squirming trying to rub his leg, the guard could see he was telling the truth and wasn't just trying to scam people. The judge could see something was going wrong too.

"Let's take a ten minute recess. Defendant is remanded back to the custody of Mercer County Department of Corrections," the judge said, motioning to House. "Take him back to jail and take care of him. Bailiff, call another deputy up here for the other four defendants."

House was escorted down to the garage, helped onto the prison bus and taken back to MCJ.

Back in the receiving area at MCJ, they had to get a wheel chair to get him back to his cell. His right leg was nearly useless. Back in his cell, the nurse came back immediately with his meds and he eagerly gulped them down.

Sitting on the side of his bunk, uncuffed and unshackled for the first time in over eight hours, House's mind went right back to the bail issue as he waited anxiously for his medications to take effect and release him from his agony. On his way out of the courtroom, the clerk handed him the paperwork necessary to post his bail. Bail had to be posted in cash or certified check only. House had emptied out his checking account at the Freemont Hotel and spent all of it on the hookers and hotel expenses before taking that six-storey jump into a pool with even more crazies. He'd had one paycheck deposited since then, but not enough to cover his bail. He had other money socked away in retirement accounts and the stock market, but it would require Wilson's help to get any of that money. Even if Wilson was willing and able to help him get his money, it would take days to get money from those accounts. And of course that depended on how things were currently between he and Wilson. Wilson found him at the airport and made him see that he had to do the right thing and turn himself in. Did that mean Wilson really would stick with him through thick and thin? Or did it mean that now that House had turned himself in, maybe Wilson would just wash his hands of House and start over with another best friend/lover?

He wanted so desperately to just talk to Wilson, and yet he was terrified of what he would hear on the other end of the line. House was not able to handle rejection, as his behavior had always demonstrated. He was much better at trying to avoid it. But if he was going to bail out of this hell hole, he had no choice but to tackle it head on.

When the meds kicked in well enough that he could move independently with his cane, he made his way to the inmate phone. 1-800-Dial-a-Wilson.

On the other end of the line, Wilson picked up the phone. The prison phone system issued a recorded announcement audible only to Wilson. "Incoming call from an inmate at Mercer County Jail. Will you accept the call? Press 1 for yes or hang up." Wilson took a deep breath. The call would probably disconnect automatically if he didn't reply within a certain period of time. Three, four, five seconds elapsed while Wilson took that deep breath and pondered whether or not he should accept the call.

Nine seconds of silence later, House's heart was pounding. _What if he won't talk to me?_

Ten seconds later, Wilson pressed 1 and the noise on the line changed a little.

"House?" Wilson asked tentatively. "Is that you?"


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N – Rating remains M for continued use of very strong language. I'm trying to wrap this up before the premiere, but it keeps getting more and more complicated (smiling). It's still my goal, though, to wrap it up before the premiere. Enjoy!**

"Of course!" House replied. "Who else would it be?" House said, relieved that Wilson even accepted the call at all. "No, wait, that didn't sound right. I'm sorry. Please don't hang up!" House said frantically.

Silence from Wilson's end. House was ready to faint.

Wilson sighed. "What do you want, House?" Wilson said, with obvious frustration.

_Ok, so it's gonna be like that,_ House thought.

Now it was House's turn to breathe deeply. Uncharacteristically, he found himself having to think very carefully about what he was about to say. Wilson could hang up any old time and then where would he be?

"Prison calls are terminated after ten minutes so I have to say this quickly. I'm sorry and I need to talk to you badly."

Wilson sighed loudly again. After a few seconds of silence, he said softly, "Yeah, and I need to talk to you too. I can't do this over the phone. I've already called the jail about visitation. They let attorneys in anytime but they only let family visit once a week. I told them I'm your cousin. Visitation is Friday and I'll see you then. Bye, House."

Wilson hung up before House could reply. It was Wednesday. House had a day and a half to dwell on the significance of the fact that Wilson obviously had something important to say and couldn't say it over the phone. _I guess it's lecture time and he doesn't want to hear anything I have to say. He has a captive audience and I'm gonna have to listen to it in its entirety. Either that or he's dumping me altogether and he doesn't know how to tell me. If he knew how to tell me he was dumping me he would've done it on the phone. Guess I'm screwed. Again._

House made one more phone call to Sam Bell, to let him know he pled not guilty to the charge and that his bail had been set at twenty five thousand dollars.

Silence descended when House told him the bail amount. "Oh my God. That's high. They must have taken into account the fact that you tried to flee first. Can you make bail?"

"Yes but not until I see my friend Friday. I have no idea how that visit is going to go. If it goes Ok, he can get my money for me but it'll be at least a few days before he gets it. But hell, it could all go south very quickly…." House's voice became quieter and quieter.

"Well, I'm glad you pled not guilty to the charge. That gives us room to plead down to something less serious. I don't expect you'll hear from the plaintiff personally. If by some wild chance you should hear from her, I need to be informed. I've already contacted her attorney and we'll discuss that tomorrow. I should be there about ten am tomorrow. Ok?"

"Guess it'll have to be. Yep, Ok." House hung up the phone.

The only thing House had left to look forward to on Wednesday was another visit from the nurse to change his leg dressing and give him his evening medications. Wowwee. Oh, that and two more meals in the chow hall. Maybe he could find some other loner losers who didn't want to be bothered, and all of them could sit at a table and peacefully ignore each other while shoveling down their food.

Thursday rolled around, and it was more of the same. Wake at 5:30 am, shower for no more than fifteen minutes, then line up for the chow hall for breakfast. Then morning medications, and the only interesting part of the day was his visit with his attorney, Sam.

At ten am on the nose, the guard came to get House and announce that he had a visitor. Well, of course he did. House had been prepared for Sam for hours.

House made a dramatic point of sitting down at the table and planting his hands on top of it with emphasis, along with an irritated eye roll at the guard. He couldn't be written up for rolling his eyes, could he? The guard completely ignored House's attitude. _Nope, eye rolling must not be a reason for a write up. Good. I'll have to do that more often._

Sam made his usual perfunctory announcement to the guard about these proceedings being confidential.

"After I got back to the office yesterday evening I drafted a letter to Ms. Cuddy's attorney of record. I'd like you to read it before we do anything else. If you agree, we'll send it by registered mail today." Sam pulled the letter out of his briefcase. It was a request for Lisa Cuddy to provide Mr. Bell with a written estimate of the amount of damage done to her house.

"They are not suing you for damages and that's good. We want to keep it that way. I want a written copy of the insurance estimate so that they can't come back later on and claim there was more damage than there actually was. It's minor but it's a good place to start. I've also already requested a copy of the police report. I know what happened, but we need a written copy of the police report in your file. I don't anticipate we'll have any problem getting the reports that Dr. Cuddy and Dr. Wilson filed with the police. Should have that tomorrow."

"Wait – Wilson filed a complaint too?" House knew about the police report Cuddy filed. Obviously she did or he wouldn't be here. He was stunned that Wilson filed one too.

"Technically, no. Maybe I should rephrase. He was at the scene when Dr. Cuddy called the police. The detective merely questioned him because he was there. The fact that he was injured would have drawn more police attention. Dr. Cuddy was the only one to press charges, but because they talked to Dr. Wilson and he was injured, there will probably be a separate report filed by the officer who spoke with Dr. Wilson. That doesn't mean Wilson pressed charges too. I can tell you most definitely that he did not. Basically what it amounts to is they probably have a separate report for each person they interviewed. They may have interviewed the other people in Dr. Cuddy's home. If they did I'll get copies of those reports too."

House was still hung up on the fact that Wilson talked to the police at all. The last time House was in trouble with the law it was during the Tritter mess. Not only did Wilson lie to get him out of trouble, so did Cuddy. Wilson was bound not to be so willing to manipulate the facts this time.

"Dr. House?" Sam was saying. "Are you with me?"

"Yeah. I have no idea how things are going to go with Wilson."

"We're going to plead down. I just need to review all of the police reports first before we decide what we're going to plead down to. I may also need character witnesses and I need you to think about who would be a good character witness. This will probably get very personal. They'll probably try some type of character assassination, to prove you're a vindictive SOB trying to get back at your ex-girlfriend, and they'll make it as nasty as they can. If you thought your breakup with her was bad, you haven't seen anything like the kind of character assassination that a trial attorney can do to the opposing side. You need to be ready for that. So when we meet tomorrow, there are two things on the agenda. I'll have the police reports and you'll have a list of potential character witnesses for me. Do you have any questions for me before we part today?"

"Yeah. Wilson is coming to visit tomorrow. I have no idea how it's going to go. He may be one of my character witnesses but it all depends on how it goes tomorrow. I don't really want you here for that."

"Good. It's just a friendly family visit, not a visit between a potential plaintiff and a defendant. Keep that in mind at all times. Don't let it turn into anything contentious. You keep saying that 'it all depends on how it goes.' Remember, you have the power to determine how it goes. Don't give that power up to anyone else. He probably will be very upset. That's normal. He's probably going to want to take it out on you. That's also normal. Remember that you have the power to make it work, to keep him on your side, or not. Don't give up that power. I'll see you tomorrow later in the afternoon after I've had a chance to get all the police reports. Bye for now."

After House was escorted out of the room and Sam Bell left, unknown to House, a caseworker in another part of the jail had just been handed House's jail paperwork. At Mercer County Jail, all inmates were assigned to a caseworker. There were woefully few caseworkers there, far too few to adequately meet the needs of the hundreds of inmates there. Most of the time all they had time to do for first-timers was read the inmate's arrest record and help the inmate bail out or post bond. If the inmate's case required any more work than that, and most did, it would have to wait until inmates with fewer needs had been taken care of. It was a simple statement of fact that there were not enough caseworkers to handle all of the cases. Now that House had had his bail hearing, the caseworker had a copy of the bail paperwork from the court. The caseworker's initial conclusion was that House appeared not to have many needs other than posting bail, so the caseworker was planning on meeting with House later on Thursday to help him with that process.

Back in his cell, again with the door closed but not locked, House buried himself in the tattered Steve Martini novel. He really didn't care all that much about the novel. He was trying to distract himself from the real issue with Wilson. Reading made the time go by faster and every minute spent reading was one more minute he didn't have to dwell on what Wilson was going to say.

The Thursday afternoon and evening routine varied not one iota from Wednesday's routine. Apparently the same damn things happened at exactly the same damn time every damn day in jail. The noise level didn't change either. It was deafening at night when everyone was locked down for bedtime, only slightly less deafening when inmates gathered in the rec yard outside during their one hour of rec time every day, and the only time it was even anything close to quiet was in the chow hall when the only reason everyone was fairly quiet was because they only had thirty minutes to throw down their food.

House had a visit from the nurse Thursday evening at the same damn time she came Wednesday evening. No doubt the nursing staff come Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and every other day at the same time in the morning and the same time in the evening. One day soon they would cut his nursing visits down to one in the evening with his Methadone. The nursing visit always went the same way. A guard came with the nurse. The guard went in first, then the nurse followed. The nurse did his dressing change, gave him his medications, watched him swallow them and then left. Five whole minutes.

Then it was time for another count, lockdown, lights out and bedtime. In other words, it was time for the volume to pick up about another hundred percent. House was learning to ignore the yelling. It became a nightly routine, like turning the TV on to go to sleep. The yelling became like white noise, something he was learning to ignore.

Friday morning rolled around with more of the same thing. Wake up call, another count, another morning visit from the nurse with meds, then chow. Showers were three times a week. House had his allotted shower on Thursday so no shower today.

Today was different. Family visitation day. Wilson was coming, hopefully. Or maybe he shouldn't hope for that. It could completely blow up in his face. It could be the last time he saw Wilson. Maybe it was like the lawyer said. Maybe he really did have the power to make it or break it. Maybe. Maybe if he just repeated that enough he would really believe it. _I have the power to make it work. I have the power to make it work. I have the power to make it work. I have the power to make it work…_

In the chow hall for breakfast, he tried very hard not to show how surprised he was to find they were serving silver dollar pancakes. He noticed when inmates had things they liked, those things tended to get taken from them. He didn't want anyone taking his pancakes. It wasn't so much that he was hungry for pancakes; he imagined they probably tasted like stale gum. The sight of the pancakes brought feelings to the surface that he'd tried to deny for so long, and also stoked the fire of profound fear in his heart that the subject of those feelings might be lost to him forever.

They reminded him of Wilson.

Instead of eating them, he secreted them away in his pocket. If Wilson was really through with House, at least he'd have the pancakes for a little while. Maybe that was stupid; but House was beginning to think that he'd done a lot of stupid things in his life. Maybe he deserved to lose Wilson. In House's mind, he'd screwed up every relationship he'd ever had. He was already convinced of this before Cuddy screamed that to him at the top of her lungs during the crane disaster. He felt that if his relationship with Wilson was in tatters, it was his fault too. That alone terrified him, but what terrified him even more was the knowledge that he had no idea how to fix it or even if it was fixable.

So he clung to the pancakes in his pocket as if they were a lifeline, hope for something left to salvage with Wilson.

Bob sat next to House before House could move. "Don't let 'em see you hiding food in your pockets. They'll write you up for taking food back to your cell," he hissed into House's ear. "The guards, I mean. Get your hand out of your pocket. They'll write you up."

"It's none of your business. I want to eat my pancakes later," House hissed in return.

"Don't care. Just don't let the guards see you," Bob whispered to House and then got up and left.

House scanned the room quickly. Nobody else appeared to have seen him pocket his pancakes, so he calmly ate everything else on the tray and went back to his cell.

With the Librium and Methadone on board, most of his withdrawal symptoms were held at bay. Alone in his cell, he laid on his back on his bunk and studied the marks on the underside of the bunk above him; marks probably left by other inmates. Most of them appeared to be gang graffiti. This was one language House didn't know. Judging by the ink on most of the other inmates, House knew that he would learn gang graffiti soon enough. A few of the drawings on the underside of the bunk were unmistakable and might come in handy later on when he needed relief of sexual tension.

Wilson popped back into his thoughts. He was never out of House's thoughts. House wondered if Wilson had ever seen gang graffiti. He wondered what Wilson would think of the new House, emerging from jail in a few months or years with a profound knowledge of prison life and gang graffiti.

_Get back to the present._ House pulled out another piece of paper and his trusty pencil. They only gave out one pencil at a time. _Better guard it with my life._

He began to scribble his thoughts about what he was going to say to Wilson – that is, if Wilson even gave him a chance to talk. Most likely, it would just be one long lecture from Wilson. House figured that if Wilson wasn't going to give him a chance to talk, he'd just walk out and that'd be that. One more relationship down the tubes.

_Have Wilson get loan paperwork from my 401k to cover the bail_

_Wilson bring it in, I'll sign and he can fax to 401k plan to get the money_

All of this depended on whether or not he still had any kind of relationship left with Wilson. He'd find out soon enough.

The prison doctor came by to check up on House's leg, accompanied, as always, by a guard. Just as the brief examination was about to get underway, another guard came by to let House know he had a visitor.

Well, well. It was now or never. House combed his thinning hair and wished he could look in a mirror. Everyone thought he didn't ever care what he looked like. Far from it. He loved that rumpled macho look. He studied the balding top of his head a little bit. _Sign of testosterone_. _That's a good thing,_ he reminded himself. He didn't think Wilson ever cared what House looked like, but House did. He wanted to look good and as normal as possible in this god-forsaken abnormal place.

House limped out slowly with a guard at his side. Inwardly he thanked the God he didn't believe in that Wilson didn't have to see him handcuffed.

House was escorted to the public visitation room. The room was crowded and he didn't see Wilson immediately. He scanned the faces in the room. The guard who escorted him from his cell led him to the back of the room until House recognized Wilson's khaki-clad butt sticking up in the air. House could see that each inmate had his own table. The inmate's visitors sat around the table with the inmate. At House's designated visiting table, Wilson apparently had dropped something on the floor and had bent over to pick it up; thus giving House the view he was initially presented with.

Wilson stood up when House and the guard approached. House expected an angry scowl or that furrowed brow Wilson had when he was about to begin lecturing House, but when Wilson stood up he bumped his head on the bottom of the metal table and both men broke out in an unexpected chuckle.

The guard left House's side and resumed his post elsewhere. There was one guard and there were plenty of security cameras in the public visitation area. Everyone could not help but read the signs regarding visitation rules because they were posted everywhere, in English and in Spanish.

"Visitation rules. Visitor and inmate are not allowed to exchange any items. Inmate must keep his hands on the table and visible at all times. Bodily contact between inmate and visitor is limited to a handshake or a hug. Visits last fifteen minutes and can be ended at any time at the guard's discretion."

Both men sat down at the table, neither knowing what to say. In their silence, both men looked at each other intensely, obviously trying to figure out what the other was going to say. Wilson was not in lecture mode. He appeared completely exhausted. House could read the worry lines, the exhaustion in Wilson's features. The way Wilson's shoulders slumped, the way his hair was not combed as neatly as it normally would be, the way his clothes were just the slightest bit unkempt and the way Wilson kept looking at House and then diverting his gaze to the table. Wilson would look at House for a few minutes and then dart his gaze back to the table as if he really, really didn't know what to say.

_This could be good or it could be very bad,_ House thought. House was so sure that Wilson was going to launch into a harangue that he had no idea how to react in this instance. House was not prepared to be the first one to talk.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," House began, pointing to Wilson's splinted wrist.

"It's nothing."

"Yeah, it is. I hurt somebody I love. I'm telling you I'm sorry."

Wilson looked at the table again, sighed, and raised his gaze up to meet House's again. "I accept your apology. You don't love me, so don't say that you do."

"Wilson," House said, and then buried his head in his hands. Crying would not do, and neither would leaving. No, he would stick this one out. He just didn't know what to say, so he kept his head in his hands.

"If you loved me, you wouldn't have forged prescriptions in my name. You would have gone to a pain doctor and gotten properly prescribed treatment. If you loved me, you wouldn't have electrocuted yourself. If you loved me, you wouldn't have shot yourself up with insulin. I know you were mentally ill then but House, mentally ill people are still capable of not hurting people they love. If you loved me, you wouldn't have tried to play a trick on me in Mayfield and get me to do something that would have gotten you in more trouble there. If you loved me, you wouldn't have done something to warrant incarceration where I can't be with you. You say that you love me, but you don't show it."

With his eyes closed and his head in his hands, House's emotions internally were at war with themselves. In House's mind, crying would show weakness. Although the tears were bubbling to the surface, House would never show them. That was how he was raised and he couldn't overcome fifty one years of training in the skill of how not to cry in public. He also had the option of just leaving right now without saying anything, but _dammit_, _this is a conversation, not a lecture,_ House thought. _I won't be lectured to. Not this time. A conversation requires more than one person to talk. I gotta figure out what to say._

"Are you going to say anything?" Wilson asked.

House sighed and raised his head from his hands. His eyes were red but not wet. "Why have you stuck with me all these years?" he asked.

Their fifteen minutes were almost up.

"Don't leave me."

"House, I'm not leaving you. But we have to figure out where we stand. I don't know where we stand. It won't be easy. Maybe you'll get the help you need in here. I don't know; maybe I need help too. I just wanted to come today to see how you were."

The announcement came over the PA system that the fifteen minutes was up. All inmates and visitors had to leave. Guards began to escort inmates back to their cells. Visitors were instructed that they were to remain where they were until all inmates had left. House and Wilson stood up to say goodbye to each other. Despite what Wilson said, House went back to his old adage that everybody lies, and was certain that Wilson would leave and never come back.

"I need some paperwork from my 401k retirement plan so I can get a loan for my bail. If you're coming back, would you mind getting that for me?" The guard was escorting House out, so House had to raise his voice for Wilson to hear him.

_House actually did not ask me to loan him the money directly. Hmmm, _Wilson thought.

As House was being escorted away, Wilson said quietly to himself, "Sure, House. No problem."


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N – this one's all Wilson. I thought it would be interesting to explore more about what's going on in Wilson's mind.**

On his way home in the car, Wilson pondered what House had said and how their visit went. Wilson had never even seen the inside of a jail. He still really hadn't seen the inside of a jail, since all he saw was the visitation room and it looked like a cafeteria. But the process of approving and searching all visitors before they got to the visitation room was surreal and frightening.

When Wilson walked through the jail's visitor entrance, he encountered a desk sergeant who took his name and the name of the inmate he was visiting. The sergeant keyed some information into a computer and Wilson was told to wait in a chair in the lobby. He had to be approved for visitation. Wilson found out from some of the other people waiting in the lobby that all visitors had to have their criminal backgrounds checked prior to being approved for inmate visitation. Some prior convictions make a person ineligible to visit an inmate.

Even after Wilson was approved to visit House, he had to be searched by a prison official. He had to empty his pockets into a container from which he would retrieve his things on his way out. He had to walk through a metal detector and all visitors were searched by a drug dog. All of this was done before visitors could make their way to the visitation areas. Everywhere Wilson looked, he saw prison officials or guards. The guards all carried pepper spray, handcuffs and some other gadgets attached to their belts. Wilson assumed that one of the other gadgets was a Taser. All of the guards had flak jackets on. Wilson wondered if any of them were armed with real guns. The whole scene was almost too much to take in.

Wilson hadn't had any real sleep since the crash. He thought he'd grown tired of worrying about House. When House crashed through Cuddy's house and then fled the scene, Wilson was harshly reminded all over again that for some crazy reason, this toxic relationship was still important to him. Only a mentally ill man would do such a thing. As toxic as House was to be around sometimes, he had a good heart. It was just very, very difficult to see sometimes. He needed help, though he was always the last to admit it. He needed someone, and right now, he had nobody but Wilson. The fact that everything was always about House and that House's needs always seemed to be more urgent than anyone else's was tiresome, in Wilson's mind.

Wilson wasn't sure if their relationship could be fixed. He had no idea how long House would be locked up, and that alone puts a strain on a relationship. Wilson wasn't even sure at this point if what they had was a friendship, more than a friendship, or maybe it was nothing. He just knew that if _someone_ was going to give up on the effort to fix things, it wouldn't be him.

Over the years, both men had said and done things that would have driven lesser men away from each other. Wilson realized after the fact that it had been wrong to insist that House do the deep brain stimulation. It had been wrong to let House think for so long that Amber's death was his fault. He realized it had been wrong to drug House and drag him against his will to his father's funeral. For all the harmful, toxic things House had done to their relationship, Wilson had been just as guilty over the years. Yet the men kept coming back to each other.

Wilson had no idea what the glue was that held them together, but there was definitely something there; something worth nurturing. The glue had disintegrated, again. The question was, what was the glue, and how could it be repaired?

He'd spent pretty much every waking moment since the crash worrying about House. Every time the phone rang, every time the door bell rang, he was sure it was more bad news about House. The fact that he knew where House was didn't make it any easier. Wilson had no idea exactly how much House's life had changed in jail but he was sure that it wasn't easy for House. He wondered if House knew or cared how much Wilson's life had changed, and how difficult it was for Wilson. House had said that he was sorry he hurt someone he loved. Wilson had never admitted it, but he loved House too. He couldn't bring himself to say it publicly, but it was true.

Wilson was the one who had to return to PPTH and listen to everyone say how sorry they were for Cuddy. Nobody was empathetic toward House. Wilson had to listen while people said House was a jerk who deserved any jail time he got; that they hoped he wouldn't be able to make bail; that jail would be "good" for him because it would "teach him a lesson". PPTH used to be a satisfying place to work but now, Wilson hated every day there. People like House's team members who used to talk to him as a friend now treated him like a social pariah just because he was House's friend. Nobody asked him how House was. Nobody even asked him how HE was anymore. It was like walking into a pressure cooker every day. It was like House had just fallen off the face of the earth and nobody else except Wilson even gave a damn.

Although Wilson didn't want to tell anyone at PPTH, it was sure to get out that he had visited House. He didn't plan on stopping, either, no matter how difficult and testy House could be and no matter how strained his work relationships might become because of it. As if they didn't avoid him enough now, Wilson wondered how much worse it would get when they found out he was visiting House. Wilson always cared what people thought of him and it really bothered him that people at work were so willing to just disown House, a man few people liked but that they had all worked with for so many years. _How can you just suddenly pretend he's not a part of all of our lives anymore?_ Wilson found himself wondering every day he heard people saying those awful things. It bothered him even more that these same people who had seemed nice and friendly to Wilson would so quickly begin avoiding him just because of House.

Maybe Thirteen would be empathetic. Maybe she didn't fully understand the situation. She'd been incarcerated herself, so maybe she might be a bit more understanding than the others. Wilson told himself he wouldn't discuss his visits with House with anyone else. If other people showed any interest in House's welfare it would have to be up to them to express their interest.

_Fifteen minutes isn't enough to accomplish anything,_ Wilson thought. _But it is a start. _Wilson had never seen House anywhere close to that emotional before. It had been a long time since he'd been involved in a conversation about House's problems where House hadn't immediately put up the walls and shut Wilson out. And Wilson had NEVER heard House ask for money that wasn't going to come out of Wilson's pocket. Maybe this could be fixed.

Meanwhile, there were a few things, practically, that Wilson could do for House.

The first was to get that loan application from House's 401k program. Wilson had the same 401k retirement plan and it would be no big deal to call them and ask them to fax him the loan application form. He would then take the blank application form to House, have House fill it out and Wilson would fax it in.

There was another alternative for House, besides getting a loan from his 401k retirement plan. The other option was to sell his bike. The bike's value was not enough to make bail but it would help. Wilson was sure House had thought of that. He wondered why House hadn't said anything about it, considering how badly he must want to get out of that awful place.

The second was to make sure House's home was clean and secure in his absence. Wilson had no idea how long House would be locked up. If it was just for a few days until he could make bail, then there'd be no need to clean out the fridge, pay the bills and get the utilities turned off. They'd find out soon enough how long he was going to be locked up.

The third was to see about House's job. As his friend, Wilson felt some kind of responsibility to at least see if House had a job to come back to at PPTH. He wasn't sure why he felt this responsibility. House was an adult after all who needed to be held accountable for his actions, and part of that accountability was for House to take care of his own employment problem. And it was a problem. Being in jail wouldn't necessarily result in any action taken against House's medical license, but being convicted of a felony would. Wilson wasn't entirely sure of the exact legal terminology for the charge but most likely it was a felony and anything having to do with prescription forgery would be a felony too.

But Wilson always felt like if he wasn't there to pick up these pieces every time House disintegrated, House wouldn't be able to do it himself, and nobody else would want to. Sometimes you gotta show some tough love. Sometimes taking on these responsibilities just further cripples the person who needs to learn how to be accountable for himself. And we're always learning. Nobody's perfect.

Wilson began to realize that maybe the glue holding their relationship together needed to be changed. Maybe they'd been using some tame old water-soluble child's glue before, something that melted and disintegrated every time it got wet. Maybe it was time to scrap the kiddy glue for some good old cement with a whole lot more tough love in it.

This was a lot of thinking for a short ride home. Wilson found himself sitting in his parking space with the ignition off, still thinking about House and how they were going to re-cement their relationship in fifteen-minute segments.


	11. Chapter 11

Wilson had the loan application form the next day, as promised. It wasn't a visitation day so Wilson wasn't allowed to bring the paperwork to the jail. Then Wilson remembered House might have mentioned his lawyer's name. _Bell, right? And it's a guy I think._ Wilson thumbed through the list of attorneys named Bell in the phone book. He called a few and asked if Gregory House was their client, then realized that client names are confidential. Nobody would be able to tell him who they had for a client.

Wilson couldn't visit, but he could get a message through to House (eventually) and House could call him back. Wilson called the jail and left a message for them to have House call him back. Six or seven hours later, House got the message and called Wilson.

"I need your lawyer's name," Wilson said.

"Why?"

Wilson sighed. _There's that 'Why' question again. _"They don't allow public visitation on any other day besides the weekly visitation day. They won't let me come in today. I have your loan application paperwork. I know you need it now. If I can get it to your attorney he can bring it to you today. I need to know quickly who your attorney is, before the jail cuts this call off. I've been calling attorneys named Bell all damn day trying to find out which one is your attorney, and they can't divulge client names. Did you just now get my message? I called six or seven hours ago."

"They're not exactly quick to do anything around here unless they're tackling and restraining some poor ass. They can't wait to do that. I'm lucky I got your message at all. His name is Sam Bell and here's his number. I'll call him first and let him know you have something for me."

"Ok, gotta go before they cut us off," Wilson said.

"Wilson?"

"Yeah, House?" Wilson sighed.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome, you idiot," Wilson sighed again and chuckled softly. Such a long way to go, but at least there was hope. "We still have a lot to talk about. I'll see you at the next visitation."

House made his way, under a guard's supervision, back to his cell. He wasn't sure, but he thought he could detect a glimmer of the old Wilson in that conversation amidst all the sighing.

Inmates in House's cellblock were not locked down, and were on "tier time" during the day. They could go to their cells if they wanted, but they weren't required to be in their cells during the day. One or two guards watched over the whole cellblock. There were many requirements even though they weren't locked down. One of the requirements was that if they went to their cells, they had to close the door. This was a practical requirement since there was so little room for other inmates to move down the tier when the doors were standing open. Like every other rule, and there was a long list of rules, inmates were not entitled to know the reason for the rule. It was a rule they had to follow, and that was that.

House could not quite get used to the idea of following rules just because they were rules. Sometimes it was difficult for him to close the door behind him because the door handle was on the left. He was right handed and it was natural to reach for the door handle with his right hand. He always had to juggle the cane and a door handle in the same hand. Over the years he had become expert at this maneuver, and handling doors became vastly easier when the Americans with Disabilities legislation was signed into law requiring buildings newer than a certain age to be made handicapped accessible. Many doors in hospitals, businesses, hotels and so forth had assist devices installed on them to make it easier to open and close them. In here, though, the cell doors were reinforced solid steel and much heavier than regular doors. Obviously this jail had been built so long ago that it couldn't be made any more handicapped accessible than it already was without just tearing the whole thing down and building a new one. There were also security reasons why doors in a jail could not be made particularly easy to open.

He knew the rule and tried to follow it at all times. The problem was that sometimes the door required two hands to pull it completely shut. House was learning to hook his cane over his left arm in order to free up both hands to pull the door shut. Sometimes that meant having to sit on his bunk for a few minutes when his leg was bothering him a bit too much. Then he would get up and close the door.

The guards had picked up on the fact that House never spent any time on the tier, always stayed in his cell, and was not always quick enough to close his door.

Today was a good example. When he got back to his cell after the call with Wilson and the follow up call to his attorney, he went right to his bunk, sat down and subconsciously began to rub his thigh. It didn't really hurt more than usual; he just had a lot to think about and this was a habit he'd become accustomed to over the years when something was bothering him. He knew the door needed to be closed. He just wanted to take a few minutes' rest on the bunk before closing it.

"Close the door."

"In a minute," House replied.

"Close it now. You know the rule."

Irritated, he temporarily forgot where he was and fired back loudly from his bunk. "Look, you damn idiot! The place is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities act. It takes two hands to close the door. In case you haven't noticed, I don't have two hands free. I'm doing the best I can. I'll close it in a minute!"

As soon as the words left his mouth it was too late to take them back, and he remembered where he was. He looked down at his feet. "Guess you're gonna write me up now."

Unfazed, the guard stared him down, closed the door and said, "No. But next time I see you in here with the door open, I WILL write you up."

The guard walked away. _Yeah, whatever,_ House thought, and then immediately went back to what he REALLY wanted to think about.

All the guards in House's cellblock were getting to know House pretty well. Prison officials held staff meetings once a week to discuss the inmates who hadn't yet been sentenced. House was among the group of inmates who hadn't yet been convicted of anything, hadn't been sentenced, and were waiting to either post bail or be convicted and sentenced. If they could post bail, they were free on bail pending trial. If they couldn't post bail they stayed in the county jail until convicted and sentenced. If they'd already been convicted and sentenced, they stayed in county jail until suitable placement was found in a state or federal penitentiary somewhere.

A staff meeting had been held earlier that morning.

House's caseworker, the warden, one of House's guards and the guard's supervisor were seated around a circular table with several files in front of them. If House had been there, he'd have sworn he was back in the diagnostics office at PPTH. The whole process of figuring out how to handle a difficult inmate was actually very similar to the process of arriving at a diagnosis for a difficult-to-diagnose patient.

They all agreed that House was not physically difficult to handle. Most inmates in their experience who were difficult to handle were big bullies, who could physically overpower almost anyone and weren't afraid to show it. For the most part, House was physically cooperative with whatever they asked him to do. What labeled him a difficult inmate was the fact that his strength wasn't physical; it was intellectual. He was a lot like a big bully in the way that he was quite able to outsmart all of the inmates and most of the guards, and wasn't afraid to show it. The whole business of casually leaving his door open when he was in his cell was a prime example of that, in their minds.

"Thank you for coming," the warden announced. "Inmate 020406 House. What's going on with him?" the warden asked the caseworker.

"Waiting to post bail. He told me he's waiting on loan approval to post his bail."

Turning to the guard and the guard's supervisor, the warden asked, "I know there have been problems with him hoarding meds and not closing his door. What's going on with that?"

The supervisor answered, "The medication issue was a one time thing. Detoxing in the infirmary fixed that. As far as the door thing, he says he can't close the door right away because it takes two hands. He says he has to sit on the bed first, then he says after a few minutes he gets up to close the door."

"He's on the upper tier of the cellblock now. There are no wheel chair accessible cells up there. We have one wheel chair accessible cell on the lower tier. Is it available? Should we give him the benefit of the doubt and move him?" the warden asked.

"It's occupied, so no, we can't move him," the supervisor replied. The other guard immediately chimed in. "He leaves the door open a lot. It takes him a long time to close it. I think he's trying to test us, to see what we'll do."

The caseworker added, "I think it's a combination of both. I think he is telling the truth AND I think he's trying anything he can think of to test the rules."

The warden said, "Unfortunately rules are rules. We can't bend them for one inmate and crack down on everyone else. Here's what we're going to do. If it happens again, write him up. He should have been written up the first time it happened. In the meantime, there are two inmates in the wheel chair cell. The one guy uses a wheel chair so let him alone. The other guy might be able to be moved. He uses a cane. We might be able to work something out. For now, inmate House stays where he is." They couldn't move him to any other cellblock because other cellblocks were reserved for women, more violent inmates or inmates in protective custody. This was the only cellblock available.

House passed by that wheel chair accessible cell every time he made his way to and from the chow hall, and every time he made his way to and from the phone. Unlike the other doors that opened manually and had manual and electric locks, the wheel chair accessible cell had a sliding door that opened by pushing a button, and closed automatically behind the inmate. It also had manual and electric locks. The cell was a little larger than the other cells because it had two bunks but the bunks were both on the floor. All the other cells had two bunks stacked one on top of the other. The wheel chair cell was still cramped, but it could house two wheelchair-dependent inmates. Due to the age of the building and the building's layout, it was the only cell in his cellblock that could be made completely handicapped accessible.

House was glad he wasn't in that cell. He'd already figured out, in his short time there so far, that it was not good to stand out. It was not good to be labeled, to be marked as weak or different. The cane already marked him as physically weak. He had to use his mind to make up for that. He'd already heard other inmates call that cell the "gimp hole" and other not-so-nice names. The last thing he wanted was to have to be housed there where he'd be even more on display than he was now. The two guys who were in that cell now were horrible, nasty people. The guy in the wheel chair had already been convicted of rape and attempted murder, and was awaiting placement in a state prison. Wheel chair guy was covered in prison tats and so muscled up that House thought he could probably crush the arm of his own wheel chair in one good grip. House didn't know the other guy in that cell. He didn't want to. All he knew was he was very glad he wasn't in the gimp hole for everyone to stare at.

After dinner in the chow hall, House made his way under supervision back to his cell, just like usual. It was still tier time for another hour or so, so most of the inmates were milling about in the common area, playing cards, chess or checkers, talking, or usually, yelling at each other. House, just like always, was the only inmate who made his way back immediately to his cell. And just like before, the door stayed open behind him. Immediately a guard descended on him. "Close the door."

House tried his tactic one more time. Rubbing his thigh, he said, "In a minute."

The guard pulled out a form and wrote him up. "Inmate House, this is a refusal to close your door. Here's a copy of the write up. You'll meet with the disciplinary board in the morning." The guard handed him a copy of the form.

Meanwhile, attorney Sam Bell received a call from Wilson. "Yes, hello Dr. Wilson. I was expecting your call. Dr. House called me earlier today and told me to expect some paperwork from you. I was leaving for the evening, but I'll stay here another hour or so if you're coming by with the paperwork. Thank you."

Wilson stopped by Bell's office. "I know I'm not entitled to know anything about what happens between you and House – oops, my friend Greg – but if I can help with anything, let me know."

Sam perused the loan application. It would cover the cost of House's bail, but typically these 401k loan applications take days to get approved. He knew from experience that these loans usually involve stock sales and stocks are only traded on business days, so Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays don't count. This just adds to the number of days it takes to get the money in the hands of the applicant. House might need to be prepared to be in there a few days longer than he thought.

Sam's office phone rang. This late at night, it had to be trouble. He really didn't want to answer it because he just wanted to go home. It had been a long day. He was obligated to answer it, though, so he picked up the phone.

"Sam, it's House. I'm in trouble."


	12. Chapter 12

Jail chapter 12

"What's up?" Sam replied, immediately concerned.

"I got written up for being insolent." House was nervously talking a mile a minute. "Actually, they wrote me up for refusing to close my cell door. I didn't refuse…" and before House could continue, Sam took a deep breath and said "Calm down. Write ups for anything are never good but this one might not be as big a deal as you think it is. But you have to keep your nose completely clean. Don't get written up for anything else. Did they tell you about a disciplinary board meeting?"

"Yeah. It's tomorrow morning but I don't know what time."

"That's ok. I'm coming over tomorrow morning anyway, first thing, with the loan application. If they call you for the disciplinary meeting while I'm there I'll go with you. If they call you after I leave I still get a copy of the paperwork and the outcome and we can deal with it. Try to get a good night's sleep. I'll see you tomorrow."

_Good night's sleep. Yeah, like that's going to happen,_ House thought as he hung up the phone. _Can't keep my damn mouth shut._

House lay awake in his cell most of the night after that, doing complex trigonometry equations and rehearsing the piano part of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, all in his mind. He also rehearsed some common vocabulary in several languages, just to keep his mind occupied with something else besides his current situation. His leg bothered him a lot and he found himself wanting to massage his leg more than the stitches would allow. The remaining stitches were probably due to be removed. It shouldn't be difficult to convince the prison doctor that the wound would never heal any better than it already was.

House wondered at the judge's discretion in setting his bail so high. Even though he was rightly considered a high risk for fleeing, $25,000 was high considering the nature of what he'd done. He hadn't hurt anyone (in the house, anyway) and hadn't intended to hurt anyone. He wondered if the judge had taken into account his prior legal trouble and if so, that wasn't fair. Since his lawyer wasn't at his bail hearing, and bail had already been set, House couldn't fight that. All he could do was fill out the loan application in the morning and wait for the money to come.

It was another completely sleepless night. He remembered the female patient he'd had several years ago who hadn't slept for 11 days; the one in the lesbian relationship who was planning on breaking up with her partner. He wondered if he kept this up, how soon it would be before he started hallucinating again.

Eventually, a few rays of the morning sunlight began to shine through the tiny slit of a window in his cell, and House began the usual morning ritual of getting ready to get up. His body felt very different off the vicodin. In his prior life, he'd have popped a few vicodin an hour or so before getting up. He always kept a bottle of them on his nightstand within easy reach. Even on good days, his leg would stiffen up during the night. The vicodin helped relieve the discomfort from stiff muscles so that he could loosen up and get up more easily in the morning. Things were a little different now that he was on Methadone, primarily because it was much more long-lasting than the vicodin and he couldn't control the administration schedule. He always got his evening Methadone dose at about 9 pm, right before lights out. It lasted about 12 hours, so at 5 am when he wanted to get out of bed, his muscles were nice and loose and arising from bed didn't require as much planning as it did when he was on vicodin.

When the morning rays shining through his window slit stirred him enough to want to get up, his leg didn't complain nearly as much as it would have on vicodin. He grabbed a piece of paper and what remained of his stubby little pencil. He had some questions for the disciplinary board this morning; but as he poised himself to begin writing, he thought _What the hell. It doesn't matter what I say. They're gonna do what they're gonna do because I mouthed off at a guard. Nobody cares what I have to say so why waste the pencil and paper?_

All he could do was shovel breakfast down when chow time came and then wait for whatever was going to come.

After breakfast, back in his cell again (this time with the door closed), Bob knocked on his door.

"Go away," House muttered.

"No. I've been before the disciplinary board before. You need to know how it works."

"I don't need anything from you."

"Yeah, you do. You mouth off at them, you might as well reserve your spot in the hole right now."

House glared at him through the tiny window in his cell door and chose not to respond.

"Ok, ok, I'm going, but when they ask you stuff, keep your answers short and quick. They like 'yes' and 'no'. That's about it," Bob said in retreat.

The loud, authoritative footsteps of a heavy, solidly built guard could be heard echoing in the hallway long before the man arrived at House's cell.

"Inmate House, cuff up. Time for the disciplinary board."

The stocky man escorted House, with his hands cuffed behind him this time, to a small meeting room outside the warden's office. When escorting an inmate to a disciplinary hearing it was always up to the guard's discretion to decide whether or not to handcuff an inmate and if handcuffs were required, whether to cuff the inmate's hands in front of him or behind him. The guards had learned long ago that inmates being disciplined could be wildly unpredictable. With House's hands cuffed behind him it was impossible to use the cane. Therefore House was escorted with two guards; one on his right side for support if needed, and one behind him for security. They walked slowly enough that he could keep up.

When the door was opened for him and he was escorted inside, he was seated on a chair that was positioned backward; he was facing forward with the back of the chair between him and the other people in the room. House assumed they did this to try to protect the other people in the room in case an inmate blew up, but House was hardly in a position to be of any physical threat to anyone. He felt like David in a room full of Goliaths. He faced no less than five people who were seated behind a conference table at least fifteen feet away from him. One guard stood next to him and one guard remained behind him next to the door. His handcuffs were not removed. It was one of the most humiliating experiences in his life.

"Inmate House, you're aware of the rule requiring all inmates who voluntarily enter their cells during tier time to immediately close their doors behind them." It was a statement, not a question, so House had no reply.

"Inmate House, you've been accused of failure to close your door on several occasions and failure to follow orders from a guard to close your door. How do you plead?" the warden asked.

"Who are all these other people?" House raised his head and defiantly asked the warden.

"How do you plead?"

"Guilty."

"What do you have to say for yourself?" someone else from the warden's side of the table asked.

"Who are these other people?" House turned to his right side and defiantly asked the guard.

"I'm Warden Jones. Caseworkers, guard supervisor," the warden said by way of introduction as he motioned to the other people in the room.

"Do you have anything else to say in defense of yourself?" the warden asked.

"Yes. I told that idiot I can't close the door right away because it requires two hands. I'm on the second tier. My leg hurts a lot after having to use those stairs. I have to sit down for a few minutes before I can get back up to close the door. He made too much of all this. I never refused to close the door. I just told him I would do it in a few minutes."

"We've considered your situation. We can't bend the rules for one inmate. Two things are going to happen. You've been found guilty of the accusation. The first thing that'll happen is that a copy of this write-up stays in your file,"

"And goes to my attorney," House interjected.

"Don't interrupt. The second is that you're being moved to the wheelchair-accessible cell on the lower tier."

"No," House replied.

"No?" the warden echoed back to him. "Your choice is to go there or go to solitary confinement. Take your pick."

House clammed up for a minute and re-thought his position. Going to solitary confinement would prolong his stay here and might make the judge re-think the bail situation. If all went well with his loan application, the bail money would be there within a week or so. He didn't want to further risk his chance at freedom.

"Ok, I'll go to the gimp hole."

"As it stands now, this won't hold up your chance to bail yourself out. Any further write-ups especially for more serious matters might, though. We'd better not see you in here again. Keep your nose clean. That's all." House was dismissed from the room. Although they tried to maintain professional composure, it was difficult for the prison officials not to wince when they saw House struggle to get up from the chair with his hands cuffed behind him. Both guards attempted to help him to his feet but House shrugged both of them off. He tried desperately to maintain his independence but with his hands cuffed behind him, he had no chance of getting up on his own. After a few minutes of tense struggle with the chair, he gave up and let the guards help him. Defeated once again by the consequences for actions he took, he let them help him back to his cell to pack up his things. The jeering picked up again as every inmate in his cellblock saw him with his hands cuffed behind his back, caneless and being helped by guards. With guards right next to him, he could do nothing to stop the taunting this time.

The small mattress, two pillows, a sheet, a blanket, his one spare set of clothing, his shower shoes, his toiletries, and his precious paper and stubby pencil had to be packed and moved to his new cell. He had been uncuffed for the move and he carried as much as he could. One guard took the rest and another guard accompanied them as they made their way down the stairs to the lower tier and to the wheel chair accessible cell.

Inside the new cell, Wheel Chair guy was already there waiting for him. "That's your half of the cell; this is mine. Don't come over on mine. Don't touch me, don't touch my stuff and don't touch my side of the floor."

"Same goes for me," House snarked back.

Apparently Wheel Chair Guy wanted conversation about as badly as House wanted clinic duty. That was just fine with both men. House laid on his bunk, closed his eyes, and began silently rehearsing song lyrics.

After about an hour of mutual silence, with which both men were quite happy, a guard came to escort House to the attorney/client visitation room. This time, House didn't need to be handcuffed. The door slid open on a track and could be opened manually, by just pulling on it, or automatically, by pressing a button. There was a handle and an automatic door-opening button on both the inside and the outside of the cell. House heard the loud CLANK of the door as it slid shut automatically behind him after he exited the cell. Well, at least he couldn't be disciplined for failing to shut the door quickly enough behind him.

In the attorney visitation room, Sam produced the loan application form. "We have to do this here. You can't take this back to your cell because I have to fax this in now. I contacted your 401k plan representative already and they have to have the paperwork today in order to expedite issuing the check."

A guard had to remain in the room with House, according to policy, just like every other time. He'd grown accustomed to having confidential discussions in front of perfect strangers, and so far every guard had been professional about maintaining confidentiality. House dutifully filled out the loan application and handed it to Sam to be faxed in.

"I guess you'll follow up with them, then?" House asked Sam.

"You'll need to contact them directly. They won't share your financial information with me, and that's fine. You can call them from in here. The only thing is, they can't mail the check to a jail. How did things go with your friend Wilson?"

"Ok, I think. I mean, I'm not really sure, but I think things can be fixed between us."

"I asked because if they mail the check to your house, someone is going to have to bring it here so you can endorse it. We'll have to call the bank and see how they'll handle cashing a check for you in your absence. Can Wilson help with that or do you need me to handle it?"

"I think Wilson will help."

"How did the disciplinary board meeting go?"

"They wrote me up for failure to close my door behind me. I told them I didn't refuse, but that it took me a few minutes to get back up and go over and close the door because my leg hurt after going up the stairs. They wrote me up anyway. They asked me how I would plead and I pled guilty. They also moved me to a handicapped accessible cell."

"Did they add any time on to your stay here?"

"No."

That's good, isn't it?" Sam asked. "Your new cell door opens and closes automatically, right? And it's bigger, isn't it?"

"It sucks. My cellmate hates people even more than I do. It's the first cell on the lower tier, and everyone has to walk by it on the way to chow. We're on display for everyone. I hate feeling like a caged monkey on display at the zoo. It's the gimp cell. They gave me a choice; either go to the gimp cell or go to the hole."

"Well, hopefully your loan will be approved and you can bail out in a few days. I gotta go. Do you have any questions for me before I leave?"

"No. Just get that faxed ASAP," House replied.

"I'm on my way to the office now. I'll fax it from there and get back to you. Meanwhile, don't get written up for anything else. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow's a public visitation day. I hope Wilson comes," House said.

"I'll try to make it in too, then. Conversations between you and I are private, but I could at least meet Wilson when he comes."

"Yep, see ya tomorrow," House replied as he stood up for the guard to escort him back to the tier. As usual, House went right into his cell and flopped down on his bunk.

Shortly after that, the nurse and the prison doc came to see him. House had removed his own leg dressing. It kept falling off and without clean dressing materials there to replace it every time it fell off, it was useless. The wound was healed and the remaining stitches needed to come out, so it was safe to leave the wound uncovered. "Let's do this in the infirmary," the doctor suggested. The nurse, doctor, House and the guard assigned to escort him made their way to the infirmary for the removal of House's stitches. The edges of the incision were red, raw and angry from rubbing against the material of House's prison-issued pants, but the wound was healed.

"Ok, you know how this goes. Take a deep breath and I'll have these out in no time."

House was used to considerably more pain than that caused by removing stitches, so he just sat there looking bored while the doctor snipped the remaining stitches out. They found a few remaining skin staples there too. Hourani must have stapled and stitched the wound shut after he removed House's tumors. Two seconds later and the remaining skin staples were removed too.

"Is the Methadone controlling your pain?" the nurse asked.

"Yeah, but it only lasts 12 hours or so, so I still need it twice a day. I know the usual dose is once a day in the evening but I need it twice a day."

"No argument there. I know you're waiting to post bail. If you do bail out, come back to the infirmary before you leave. You'll need a written referral for a pain clinic. I can't write you a prescription for Methadone on the outside. You'll need to get it from a pain clinic. I'll give you a written referral for a good pain clinic and you'll have to follow up with them to get your Methadone."

The guard escorted House back to his cell. Wheel Chair Guy was waiting with a glower on his face. "Hear you got Methadone."

"Yeah, and it's mine," House countered, in no mood to put up with any crap from anyone. All he had to do was get his bail money and he'd be outta here.

"You know what happens to guys who got good stuff. They don't keep it very long."

"If you're threatening me, yeah, keep it up. I'll have your ass in solitary so fast you'll be burning rubber."

Wheel Chair Guy rolled right up next to House's bed and hissed in his ear. "You think I ain't got a hundred places in this here wheel chair to hide a shank? Next time your Methadone comes, I get half."

House looked kept his eyes lowered, spoke quietly and answered WCG anyway. "Methadone is liquid. They watch me swallow it. I can't cheek a liquid."

Wheel Chair Guy hissed in his ear again. "I ain't sayin' it again. I'm not stupid. It comes in pills too. Tell them you want two 50 mg tablets instead of the liquid. Tell them the liquid makes you sick. Tell them anything. I don't care. Just get the pills."

"Look, I'm not trying to get shanked here. I know it comes in pill form too. I'm a doctor. Doctors have to get special training before they can order it in pill form. Look at where we are. We're lucky they have the liquid." House was truly terrified of the man, because right now the man had a lot more mobility on wheels than House had with his cane. The man could move four times faster than House could, and from the looks of his upper body, he could probably bench press four times as much weight as House could too. He REALLY did not want to tangle with this guy. But he was between a rock and a hard place – or, more specifically, a hard and sharp pointy thing. He knew very well that the prison doctor would probably not be certified to order methadone in pill form. Few doctors outside of pain clinics were. Beginning in 2000, the US government required US doctors to attend a training course and be certified to prescribe Methadone in pill form. He knew that from his short time on Methadone several years ago. House doubted very much that many jail doctors were afforded this opportunity.

WCG rolled over and took everything of House's that could be sold on the prison black market. It wasn't much; the only items of even tiny value were his toiletries. For good measure, though, he took House's clothes and shoes. He took everything.

"You want this shit back? Get me the pills."


	13. Chapter 13

House could wait until tomorrow to go to the canteen and replace what was stolen. He knew that if he went today, the replacements would just get stolen again. He'd have to find some way to hide his stuff, if that was possible. He could also probably get another pair of shoes and clothes too. The stuff didn't have any monetary value, but it was all he had currently. It was bad enough that someone would have the gall to just extort it from him, right out from underneath his nose, but what was even worse was the pathetic weakling he thought he had become. He couldn't even retaliate verbally; because while he had a good comeback, it would have resulted in getting the crap beaten out of him again. Then he remembered all the patients he'd stolen food, flowers, stuffed animals, and candy from. Granted, most of them were coma guys, but still, maybe someone in their family felt just like he did now.

Meanwhile, the only sure thing he could do was to appease WCG and let him keep all of his ill-gotten goods. House would make a public show of asking the nurse, next time she came by with his Methadone, if they had it in pill form. He would make damn sure WCG was in the cell or within earshot when she came, too.

House passed the rest of the day waiting tensely in his bed for the nurse to come with his evening dose of Methadone. He mentally rehearsed Billy Joel's "Piano Man", recalled several recent difficult patient cases and mentally went through the tests and procedures that had been necessary to diagnose them, and finally, the nurse came with a guard and his evening Methadone dose.

WCG was not in the cell. He was in the common area playing checkers with some other big beefy bruisers.

"Hey! I puked up the liquid this morning. I need it in pill form." House made sure to say this very loudly, so WCG would hear.

"We can't dispense it in pill form. We don't even have it in pill form. It's liquid or nothing. I can give you something for the nausea if you need it," the nurse said looking at House questioningly, "but you don't look nauseated to me."

Whispering, House said, "I'm not." Loudly, House announced, "Then I need my scrip filled from an outside pharmacy that has the pills. I can't take the liquid anymore. I need the pills." The nurse got the unspoken message right away.

Quietly, out of WCG's earshot, she said to House, "I can't get you the pills." She couldn't say any more in the guard's presence. She looked at House, obviously conveying the silent message to him that there was something she could do; she just couldn't tell him about it with the guard being there.

"Take the liquid. I'll be back later to check on you." House swallowed it as the nurse and the guard watched.

After the nurse and the guard left, WCG came thundering back into the cell along with four or five of his big bodyguard bruiser buddies. "Where's the pills?"

"I told you, they don't have it in pill form."

"You better figure out something damn quick. My customers are not patient men," WCG growled.

House lay scheming on his bunk. He hoped the nurse had something up her sleeve, but in case she didn't, he might be able to get Wilson to smuggle in some of his Vicodin tablets. He could either try to pass the Vicodin tablets off as Methadone or just tell Wheel Chair Guy that they were Vicodin and hope WCG had customers for it. Wait. _Wilson? Smuggle contraband in to jail? Not in a million years._

House was beginning to doubt that he would survive the few days it would take to get his money. By the time he received the cash, they'd probably have to use it to pay his hospital expenses after WCG and his buddies got done with him.

WCG had left the cell with his entourage.

The nurse came to House's cell alone.

She obviously knew he was being extorted, or at least suspected that he was. The healing cuts on his face were pretty good evidence of that. WCG had long been suspected of running a contraband ring. Everyone knew he and the guys he hung out with were quite capable of strong-arming other inmates.

"Get out of here before he comes back!" House hissed to her.

"I can get you moved back to the infirmary. Are you up for a little trickery?" she whispered. Of course he was. When was he never NOT up for a little trickery?

He watched as she produced a small black leather pouch from her pocket. It contained a suture removal kit.

"Come over here. We have to make this look good. Act like I'm just cleaning your head wound. I'm actually gonna pull the stitches and make it bleed so I can get you moved back to the infirmary. This is gonna hurt but no worse than what you're already used to."

He leaned in and winced as she surreptitiously removed the stitches from the un-healed cut on his face. This was the cut when his original cell mate clocked him. She gently pulled the edges of the wound apart to get it bleeding again.

Out loud, she said, "Guard, he's bleeding. I need to move him back to the infirmary."

House smiled as he was escorted, yet again, back to the infirmary with the guard at his side and the nurse behind him. Nobody needed to ask why he had no belongings to take back to the infirmary with him.

Once installed in a cell in the infirmary, the nurse spoke with House confidentially.

"The doctor isn't here today, so that'll buy you at least another day back here before the doctor re-sutures it and we have to send you back. I can help you get away from him permanently if you'll tell me and a guard what happened."

"Nothing happened."

"House, I'm not stupid. He's been suspected of running a contraband drug ring here for a long time but he's never been caught. Did he try to extort pills from you?"

"No."

"We can't help you if you don't tell us what happened."

"Nothing happened. When my bail money comes through I'll be gone and I don't want to leave in a pine box."

"Well, if you change your mind, call me."

The nurse left his cell. A guard came back in with a fresh set of clothes, a pair of underwear, a pair of shower shoes and some toiletries to replace the things that were stolen. Then House was alone for the night, yet again, with his thoughts.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N – Last chapter! Hooray! I got it done before the premiere! **

Next morning, bright and early, a guard clumped down the hallway doing his morning count and awakening the inmates. The infirmary was crowded and uncharacteristically loud. A large fight broke out in another cellblock during the night and the victims were in the infirmary being treated for their injuries and yelling at each other from their respective cells.

Safe in the infirmary, alone in his cell and away from Wheel Chair Guy and his goons, House wound up sleeping through most of the night.

The wound on his head looked awful but had stopped bleeding. Wounds don't have to be bleeding in order to justify being sutured. House had no idea which prison doctor he was going to see today, and he didn't want to take a chance on getting a doctor that didn't have much emergency room experience. He'd have to get it started bleeding again.

Among the toilet articles the guard brought with him was a new toothbrush. House limped over to the sink and furtively looked around to make sure nobody was near. He gritted his teeth and scratched at the wound with the toothbrush until a tiny river of blood began to trail down the corner of his face again. When it began bleeding enough to justify further medical attention, he dipped the end of the toothbrush in some water, cleaned it, and limped back to bed.

An inmate and a guard came through passing out breakfast trays. Inmates in the infirmary still only had the same short period of time to eat breakfast. House had developed a new habit of inhaling his food even though most of it wasn't even worth taking a second look at.

Right after breakfast trays were passed out, the doctor arrived. The doctor and nurse began doing their morning rounds. When they got to House's cell, he was still shoveling breakfast down. He looked up from a bowl of tasteless oatmeal. The fresh trail of blood was beginning to dry up and clot.

Fortunately the nurse was the same one who got him moved to the infirmary yesterday.

"Well, well, well; we meet again," said the doctor.

"Inmate House is here for re-suturing. He said he was brushing his hair and accidentally pulled the sutures out when the bristles of the brush got caught in the stitches," the nurse said to the doctor.

Both the nurse and House studied the doctor's face to gauge his reaction to this crazy lie. People with sutures are normally careful enough to avoid accidentally pulling them out prematurely.

"Seriously? A doctor, who should know better, got his stitches caught in a hairbrush and pulled them out?" the doctor asked, disbelievingly. "I guess you wanted a ticket back here. Well, let's just get the thing sutured and get him back where he belongs."

The gears in House's head went into overdrive. If Wilson didn't bring the damn money today, they'd have to find some other reason to keep him in the infirmary. The only other choice was to put him in protective custody. Nobody wanted protective custody. House didn't know much about it other than the fact that the slang term for it was PC and that nobody wanted it.

When the doctor left, House called the nurse. This being a jail, the nurse was the only one in the infirmary and she had at least 25 inmate patients to take care of, so it took awhile for her to get back to see what he needed. At least she was nice about it.

The nurse had sized House up pretty well the first time she laid eyes on him. _A maverick doctor with emotional problems._ _Kind of a loner, but on the other hand, likes attention. _She knew what his charge was, as all inmate charges were readily available to all staff members. For safety's sake, any staff member coming into contact with an inmate might need to know what that inmate's charges were. She'd anticipated anger management problems with him because of his charge, but to date she hadn't seen any evidence of anger directed at the medical staff. He said he liked to be alone, and some of his behavior seemed to prove that, but on the other hand, a lot of his behavior seemed to prove that he wanted attention even when he said he didn't. Provoking people was one example. She'd long ago adopted the motto that "everybody lies". He was a good example of that.

She saw many inmates in the infirmary, sometimes the same ones over and over again, for whom there was no help. They had offended so many times that jail was home to them. Being free on the outside was foreign and impossible for them to handle. Being in jail was normal, familiar territory for a lot of these guys.

Then there were a few guys for whom jail was a turning point in their lives. For them, jail actually accomplished something and once they got out, they stayed on the straight and narrow and kept out of any further criminal trouble. The staff lived for these guys. Nobody wanted to see a guy come back. House was one of these guys. For once in his life, his difficult reputation didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that he should never come back.

The nurse knew something about the other side of those jail bars. She had always been a law abiding citizen. Several years ago she'd acquired two traffic tickets and forgotten to pay them. She learned the hard way that if tickets go unpaid, a warrant is issued for the person's arrest. She got stopped by the police for a completely benign issue regarding a radio antenna on her car. Normally this would just have been an informational stop, something the cops felt they needed to investigate but nothing more would have happened and she'd have been allowed to go on her way. Unfortunately she had the two unpaid tickets and a warrant for her arrest. She was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the very jail where she worked as a nurse. She had to go through the whole intake process in front of officers with whom she worked. She was mortified beyond belief. Actually, words couldn't really describe how she felt. She'd never cried so long and so hard in her life. She found out that it didn't matter who she was or what she was arrested for. All inmates were treated the same in the intake process. Everyone was treated like they were a murderer. She knew what it was like to be treated like the scum of the earth when the only thing you were guilty of was being stupid and forgetting to pay two tickets. She spent the worst 18 hours of her life behind bars in that county jail. Her bail situation was the same as House's, but just not as high. Her bail was not actually bail, it was bond, and the bond consisted of the dollar amount of the traffic tickets plus court costs. Her bond was about $700 total. She was behind bars for 18 hours because she didn't have $700 in cash in her pockets. Who does, other than drug dealers? She had it in her checking account, but there was no access to her checking account from jail. They only accepted bond or bail payments in cash. She had to call a family member to get the money and post her bond. That was the hardest thing about all of this – a middle aged woman with no criminal history having to call her family, tell them she was in jail, and furthermore, that she needed them to post bond. Later on, after it was all over with, she realized that having to get her family involved to post bond was the biggest reason why she never re-offended. She was on the receiving end of some much-needed tough love and it worked.

So she completely understood House's predicament. Sometimes tough love is what it takes. She knew that House's mother was still living but apparently not involved in his life. She knew he had no other family. She wondered how many other Department of Corrections staff members knew what it was like to be alone on the other side of those bars.

She was determined to help him any way that she could. She knew that if anyone found out that she got him back in the infirmary under false pretenses, she could be fired. He didn't seem the type to tattle, and he certainly seemed to appreciate her help. She suspected he appreciated the help more because it was offered, but not forced on him. He could have taken the obvious way out and requested PC, but she knew what happened to inmates after they went into PC. Sometimes they don't have a choice. She saw an opportunity to help him avoid PC and managed to make it work without getting herself or House in any trouble.

She went back to House's cell to see what he needed.

"Morning, sunshine. What's up?"

"Now that my cut is re-stitched I guess I have to go back to my regular cell." It was a statement, not a question. House's affect was flat; completely emotionless.

"Here's the situation. We're not full right now and I'm here all day. I can keep you back here today if we don't fill up. If we fill up, I have to move you. That was some quick thinking you did. If you do it again they'll catch on. Don't do anything else to hurt yourself."

"You can't just keep me back here with no reason."

The nurse had no answer, but simply looked at him knowingly. _Please get my message!_ she thought.

He looked at her with just a hint of a smile. _Maybe he gets it,_ she thought. She couldn't say anything. She had to hope he understood what she meant. Of course she couldn't keep him back here with no reason, but she was the only medical staff in the infirmary today until the doctor came. For now, she was the one to determine who stayed and who got transferred out. For now, she didn't have to have a reason to keep him here.

"Today's visitation day. Can my visitor come back here or do I go to the visitation room?"

"If you go to the main visitation room, they're going to assume you're healthy enough to leave the infirmary. Your lawyer can see you in your cell. For family visits, we have a little visitation room back here that's only about big enough for you, a guard and one visitor. Only critically ill inmates or inmates with good behavior are permitted visitors back here. So tell your visitor to tell the personnel up front that they're here to visit an infirmary patient. They'll bring your visitor back here and, of course, a guard remains in the room for the entire fifteen minute visit."

House limped over to the inmate phone, wiped the previous inmate's spit off of it and called Wilson.

"Hey, my check arrive yet?" he said when Wilson picked up the phone.

"Hi, House. I'm fine; thanks for asking. Your check arrived. You need to endorse it over to me so I can get it cashed for you. There's apparently all kinds of red tape involved in cashing a check of this size. I've already called a bunch of people. We can try to expedite getting it cashed today, but the IRS usually makes banks wait a few days before cashing checks of this size. I'll be over in a little bit."

"Yeah, better hang up before they hang up for us. I'll see ya." House ended the phone call.

Back in his cell in the infirmary, House drew a chess board on a piece of his precious paper and made two sets of chess pieces out of little pieces of crumpled up toilet paper. He had no way of coloring each set white or black, so he made the "white" pieces square and the "black" pieces were little round balls. All made out of toilet paper. On his homemade chess board, he laid out the "white" and "black" pieces and practiced several chess openings. After he'd practiced a few common openings, he rehearsed some offensive and defensive moves. It wasn't easy when the only characteristic differentiating white from black pieces was the shape of the paper they were made out of, but he made do. The pieces kept falling off the board but he figured out a way to flatten the bottom of the round "black" pieces so they wouldn't slide off so easily. That didn't prevent his pieces from being blown off the chess board every time he breathed on it, but hey, ya gotta make do with what ya got.

Before he knew it, two hours had elapsed and it was almost noon. He'd become so engrossed in his paper chess game that, at least temporarily, he was able to avoid thinking about anything else but chess.

Sure enough, the minute lunch trays were served, a guard came to let him know he had a visitor. He could shovel the damn food in quickly or he could eat it in the visitation room. They allowed that back in the infirmary; but if he did that, he had to eat it within the fifteen minutes allowed for visitation. They had more important things to deal with than food. Option A it was; shovel the food in quickly. After five minutes of shoveling food in, the edible portions of his lunch were happily nestled in his stomach and he was ready to be escorted to the visitation room for his visit with, no doubt, Wilson.

House was really embarrassed that the guard had to stay so close to him, but the room was very tiny and afforded absolutely no privacy. House figured that must be why lawyers were permitted in the inmate cells. There would be no way they could maintain any kind of lawyer patient confidentiality in this tiny little cubicle.

But the current visitor was, indeed, Wilson. House was never so happy to see his guy. Clutched in Wilson's hand was a long white legal-sized envelope with House's name on it.

"Gimme!" House sang.

"Not so quick. Well, yeah, I gotta give it to you so you can endorse it over to me right quick. I'll zip it over to my bank and I spoke with the manager. There's already enough money in my account to cover the check so I MAY be able to get it cashed today. Can't promise it. They said if they can't cash it today it'll be because of IRS regulations and we should be able to cash it Monday at the latest."

Wilson handed the check over to House and a pen for House to endorse it.

"We need to talk."

House looked at him and rolled his eyes as if to say _If this is Wilson-speak, in other words, a lecture, I'm not listening._

"I gotta give you credit. I can't believe you didn't ask me to lend you the money. House, I would have lent it to you. When you said what you did about getting the money yourself, I just… I just…. " and Wilson buried his head in his hands and his voice started cracking.

"Wait a minute. You are seriously hurt because I didn't ask you to lend me the money?" House asked incredulously.

Wilson's head shot up in surprise. He exclaimed, "Oh, no! I'm not hurt that you didn't ask me to lend you the money. I'm incredibly proud of what you did. I couldn't have done what you've done the last few days. I couldn't have gone through it."

"You wouldn't be here. You're too responsible. You wouldn't go two miles an hour over the speed limit, let alone crash into someone's house," House retorted softly and with a hint of a smile.

"Who bailed me out of jail in New Orleans after I smashed up the window in that bar?" Wilson smiled.

"Touche," House replied with his trademark closed-mouth, lopsided grin.

"And who kept my secret from the medical board and the hospital when I had the affair with my patient?"

"Yeah, I guess you do owe me one," House smiled.

"No, I don't. I don't 'owe' you anything and you don't 'owe' me anything either. These things are what people do for people they love. I know, I'm going to sound sappy as hell but we do these things because we love each other. We don't expect anything in return. When you told me you would get the money yourself, I knew right then and there that whatever I did to help you now, you wouldn't expect anything from me in return. You can say what you want and I wouldn't expect anything other than good old House snark from you. I know we're going to have to work very hard to make this work out and I know you want it as badly as I do."

House had a good comeback, but Wilson really meant what he said and House wisely bit his tongue. For the first time ever, House knew that his feelings for Wilson were reciprocated. He could quit pretending that he needed anyone else in his life. It was okay to admit that that he loved the guy who really loved him in return. He didn't have to pretend that since his relationships with Cuddy, Cameron and Stacy didn't work out that he didn't need anyone else; that he was fine being alone. He'd been living a lie. Of course he wasn't fine being alone. Nobody really is. For the first time since Stacy, Wilson reminded him that he had something of value to bring to a relationship. Cuddy had told him that she didn't want him to change. All words and no meaning. The difference with Wilson was that Wilson didn't have to say it. House knew as well as Wilson that they would both have to work hard to make this relationship work. A good, stable relationship requires work from both parties. But with Wilson, House knew that the good qualities he could bring to a relationship would be valued and he would be loved for who he was, not who Wilson wanted him to be. He would try to change, he always would. But everyone fails sometimes and even when he failed, he would still be loved and he would love in return.

Regardless of what his immediate future held in store for him, he was now free.

**A/N – and so we end this story. House's legal trouble was never really the main focus of the story so it really doesn't matter how things work out for him in the courts or in jail. What mattered to me, as far as the story, was the issue of bail. House is always saying actions mean more than words, and to me I couldn't think of any more meaningful way for House to show that he was owning up to what he did than by having him go through all this red tape to bail himself out. It would have been much easier, and much less interesting, if Wilson had bailed him out or if Wilson had just jumped ship on House altogether. I thought it would show much more character development if House had to work and wait and go through all this trouble to bail himself out; while keeping Wilson involved and showing how their relationship could develop if House bailed himself out. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the story and let's hope we're happy with the season premiere tonight!**


End file.
